Seems like

Have you noticed how quiet it is? I don't mean the vehicle traffic, businesses closed and hardly anyone on the sidewalks. Seems like war has stopped for the moment. Or at least we aren't hearing about it. 

We aren't hearing so much about politics either, are we, the raving and fist-shaking. 

I don't think we're coming together, we can still hold on to our hatreds, keep them in the back of our minds, because we'll surely want them later when we get busy putting the world back like it was. God forbid.

Sure, covid-19 is worrisome and scary, and I'm as concerned as you. We're sheltering here in 7H, as safe as we can reasonably make ourselves, pretty much following the guidelines. It's nice to be concerned about self and others for the moment instead of hating Red or Blue people and drone targeting people in other countries who hate us. 

It was this way for a while after 9/11 also, remember? People came together, united for a while. But then ...

Humans come together against a common enemy, there must be something instinctive about it. If we're to come out of the current covid-19 damage and scare perceiving something positive about it, maybe we can say that for a while it made us love our neighbor as ourself. Covid-19 is not "the will of God", and anyone who thinks it is is either exceedingly simple or worships not God: Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, but some nasty deity such as the Evil Eye, or Satan again set loose on Job. Covid-19 is one of those "evil in the nature of things" moments that happens from time to time in the created order. It is God: Father, Son & Holy Spirit who may lead us to bring something good out of it, perhaps an awakening that we could all always be united for the common good against a universal enemy. 

Such as hatred of people who are different from us.

I can pray so. So might you.

In the meantime, sheltering in place here, as usual I'm not satisfied simply to read, finish, and re-read books I already have. So I order a couple related to my peculiar interest. One, already dropped at the front door and I'm 86 of 418 small print pages into it, is Tapping Hitler's Generals, transcripts, observations, and analyses of secret conversations 1942-1945 edited by S Neitzel. Why'm I fascinated with them? I think because I cannot fathom bottomless evil taking over the minds of an entire people, Volk. What happens to the personality, individually and corporately, of folks who once seemed civilized, that turns us into barbaric monsters? It's more than a rhetorical question. Interested because I was a boy growing up watching the Third Reich expand and collapse. Interested because I identify shamefully as of German descent, some of my cousins would have saluted and participated. Interesed because, witnessing My Lai, I know it includes us. Indeed, I see it happening now, here in the evil certitude of bitter political division and in anti-semitism, for a while guiltily suppressed but now spreading shamelessly again across Europe. I wonder, Genesis 6:5-7, if it's Time for Noah & the Flood again, or (James Baldwin) The Fire Next Time. Or at least a warning - - I know what you're thinking, I've dismissed that and I'm not going there. Isaiah, Hosea, Amos and Micah would perceive it and go there, but I don't and won't.

Also in the meantime, besides books, other treats to enhance contented isolation here in 7H, an order to O&H Bakery in Wisconsin for Kringles &c. Those are busy folks: I ordered Wednesday afternoon, status email came right back accepting my order and saying it was being packed and shipped, status update almost immediately that FedEx had picked up the order and it was en route, another status update saying it was in Memphis, another update saying it was on the FedEx truck in Lynn Haven and out for delivery. A knock at the door and a status update saying it had been delivered.

Bite of cherry, cranberry & cream cheese Kringle with black coffee for breakfast.

Everything seems different and other. Seems like we could make everything better as we work through it and come out of it.

Picture, I need a picture. Think I'll post this one again. Seen yesterday during the walk past HNES, a prayer & hope fence.

RSF&PTL
T+