A year of mourning

A year of mourning draws to a close today. Of course, the mourning will not cease, but we have passed once thus far through each season. By grace alone.

It is no more clear what comes next than it was a year ago. Then, it was mustering the strength to "have" Christmas, for "celebrating" Christmas did not seem possible. For the grandchildren's sake, we said.

For 365 days since, we have tried to put one foot in front of the other as we learn how to walk again. We stumble and sometimes fall, getting back up to face the day because the sun keeps rising every morning.

In fact, morning and mourning are reliable visitors. One is welcome, by which we mark the rhythm of life. The other refuses to play by rules, sometimes barging in and at others knocking at the door bidding entry.

We honor mourning but put our trust in morning. Let the morning bring word of your unfailing love, the Psalm-writer says, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life.

Here's to life. Hers and ours.

Give us just one scandal

Watergate's unfolding captured our attention for years. The repercussions lasted decades. It seems now we hear of a new potential Watergate daily. Who can keep up? Where are Woodward and Bernstein, and where might Deep Throat be lurking?

Let's pay for the news we need

What if we resolved in the year to come to pay a fair price for the news we need? Web, online or print. Your hometown newspaper. The New York Times. Public radio. Any enterprise that attempts to do journalism for the public good.

 Do "mainstream" media always get it right? No. But the news we often get for free isn't news at all. It's ideology wrapped like cotton candy around a flimsy cone of fact.

 Mainstream journalism's biggest mistake was not reading the tea leaves of the technological communications revolution. In all my years at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, we thought our competition was the Star-Tribune of Minneapolis. Our competition ended up being the classified ads that dried up in the back of the D section and migrated toward cars.com.

 What followed were years trying to give away their product for free. In doing so, newsrooms have been decimated. It's not just fewer reporters available to cover fewer stories. It's that fewer sets of eyes - editors, colleagues, etc. - are employed to ferret out truth from rumor, fact from folly, and news from propaganda.

 If anything matters much in this world, we have to pay for it, save for God's grace and sunlight. Let's pay for the journalism we need. Subscribe. Buy. Or let anyone and everyone with a keyboard and access to a Web site or an app dictate the future of our citizenry.

Thanksgiving in three acts

1) The grand girls disappear for 30 minutes. "Don't come in our room." They reappear with an 18x24 inch hand-drawn Thanksgiving card for us all, and then ask us to sign it with what we're thankful for. Aww.

2) I see my mother-in-law at Thanksgiving dinner. Because of poor health, she rarely speaks anymore. But she greets me with, "Hi, how the hell are ya?"

3) I make small talk with aforementioned mother-in-law. She asks about my baseball lapel pin. I say, "The Chicago Cubs won the World Series!" No reply; back to distant stare. Some several silent moments later, she's wheeled up to a table of other family members and declares loudly, "The Chicago Cubs won the World Series!"

How, then, shall we live?

Nov. 9, 2016

This morning is the second time in a week I've awakened to a world that has looked different. The last one was just about baseball. This morning, as 44 times previously, we have awakened to a new president-elect.

Whether you got out of bed on the 'left" or the "right" today, I don't have to speak the obvious. You've lived and breathed it in your casual conversations, on television, on Facebook, at your Thanksgiving dinner tables, in your workplaces: We are a profoundly divided people. The conversations I've observed so far this morning convince me that won't change soon.

In a political sense, it's doubtful many are truly inclined to "come together," as is often spoken the day after an election. Yet Jesus calls us to be one.

How do we do that in a remarkably complex world amidst the divisiveness in which we live?

By remembering that when we look at "issues," we're looking at people. It's easy to dehumanize any argument, but whether it's taxes or the 2nd Amendment or streets & sanitation, what matters is how we as humans live together in God's created world.

By remembering that it's highly unlikely Jesus would have sided with one political party. He came to embody the kingdom of God, not partisanship. For the sake of our brothers and sisters in Christ, we do well to know we don't gain the inside track to God's favor by how we vote.

By remembering that in calling us to love and respect one another, Jesus didn't say, "Let's all just get along." Despite how we may think about the "issues" of the day, persons of faith claim these things matter and must be worked through: racism, sexism, poverty, war & peace, and all forms of hate.

Hate isn't just "out there." I have witnessed disparaging public conversations about issues close to home - such as Milton's school referendum - in which neighbors denigrate one another. Hurt and divisiveness will not go away once ballots are counted.

God gave us Jesus in order that we might be reconciled. God gave us the church so that we might be better together than alone. And God gave us the Holy Spirit for a time such as this.

As Christians, this we believe:

"He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
    and to walk humbly with your God?"
- Micah 6:8 [NRSV]

Time flies

Monday, Nov. 7, 12:47 p.m.

It's been 108 hours since the Chicago Cubs won a World Series.

There are no words

Nov. 3, 2016, 12:47 a.m. EDT

Perfect weather

Oct. 25, 2016

Montero for president!

Oct. 15, 2016

Miguel Montero’s grand slam to right field in the eighth inning of Saturday’s NLCS Game 1 gave the Cubs a 7–3 lead over the Dodgers. (SI)

Scott family clan

Circa 1985