And it lived in the house. Like, with the family.
And that is quite literally all I know about it. I simultaneously wish I knew more and am glad that I do not.
But I can’t resist that as a title. It’s just too good.
Over The Weekend, I Learned My Great-Grandmother Had a Pet Squirrel Named Corky.
It will remain a weird mystery.
or
2. What do you want it to be?
This little fish, y’all.
This tiny, seemingly insignificant pufferfish astounded me the other day. I have never heard of such a little artist until I watched a BBC Earth video a few days ago.
Check out this video, and see what he does to impress a mate.
This little fish creates an artistic structure in the sand – one that’s complex in its detail and mathematical precision. It’s astonishing. We’re left curious, how does this little being have such an ability?
And we feel a sense of wonder.
I think we need a sense of wonder, particularly in times of great stress. We need to be reminded that there is a world worth feeling awe about – a world worth living in, a world worth protecting.
Perhaps there are times when we struggle to access a feeling of wonder. And if so, that’s completely understandable and okay. But thankfully, curiosity and wonder are things we can practice. They aren’t goals or benchmarks. They’re play. We can always engage them.
So what initiates your sense of wonder these days?
Do you know what’s great? Handwritten letters.
I didn’t really know I was missing this. In fact, I viewed letter writing purely as a genre from the past. But during this pandemic, I’ve received a number of them, and they give me joy. One of my very best friends sends many people handwritten cards, and they are such a gift. She’s made this a personal practice. I love it.
This has helped me think about something within the letters too. It has me thinking about the beauty of slow connections. We need these.
When I say slow connections, I’m talking about more than the amount of time between sending and receiving mail, though that’s certainly a slow connection. (And getting slower all the time? Eeek?) I’m also talking about the types of life snapshots we might capture in handwritten letters – how letter writing depicts them in a slow and unique way, then uplifts their value as we share them with others.
As I mentioned, this person is one of my very closest friends. We talk over the phone about significant things that are happening in our lives. I send her photos and videos over texts. We connect about large things and immediate things. But when she writes me a handwritten card, I have the opportunity to learn what’s going on that particular day and that particular moment through written words.
For instance, the cats just jumped across the room in a funny way, though they were cuddly a few minutes before. The tea is really good this morning. Her husband just said a funny one-liner.
Slowness takes time to capture these, prioritizing the small things as meaningful. Slowness takes time to share these with a friend.
To enjoy them. To choose them. To write them down. To put them in the mail in the anticipation of a friend seeing them too.
We need slow connections.
I vividly remember that before my brain surgery in 2012, I signed consent forms. On these forms, my surgery was called “elective craniotomy.” I asked the nurse what that meant; after all, I never got the sense in the months leading up to surgery day that this procedure was optional. They explained that “elective” meant this was not an emergency surgery; I was conscious and able to consent. We scheduled the surgery in advance. It didn’t have to happen that exact day. I had waited three months for this surgery, so that I could finish college first. That’s what elective means in this context.
Having to cancel elective surgeries because of COVID — again — is causing people to have some very important treatments delayed. It’s not a mere inconvenience. These are often necessary and lifesaving surgeries. Hospitals are running out of room and patients are having to be transported great distances and at great cost to other hospitals with capacity. Nearly all (>95% generally, often 99%+) of the patients hospitalized now for COVID are unvaccinated. Everyone, except for those under 12 years old or those with severe allergies to the ingredients in these specific vaccines, has had the opportunity to get vaccinated by now. We could have prevented the hospitals from filling up again. But too many people have refused these very safe and effective vaccines, in the name of “freedom” or whatever. In the richest country in the world, which spends the most per capita on healthcare even before the pandemic, having to postpone one’s very necessary surgery because of a surge in preventable infections doesn’t feel like freedom to me. (Neither did having a house with indoor temperatures in the 40s during the freeze in February.)
These vaccines were developed and purchased mostly with our tax dollars. Every day they’re getting wasted when people don’t show up to get a shot. To waste a vaccine that’s already bought and paid for by all of us, and then rack up the healthcare costs associated with a preventable disease, which can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, is such a travesty. To lose one’s life to COVID because they believed in misinformation rather than getting a vaccine is also a terrible waste. So-called fiscal conservatives should be outraged by this tremendous waste caused by vaccine refusal. But instead we are hearing about freedom and personal responsibility, and we have neither.
No one has a civil right to spread a deadly contagion. Failure to participate in public health should bar someone from certain aspects of public life. I’m all for employers requiring their employees to be vaccinated, and onerous consequences for those who do not, such as rigid testing requirements. I strongly support any evidence based strategies for getting people to choose to be vaccinated. I just wish we didn’t need any of this. I volunteered over 20 hours in February to qualify for a vaccine. Now it’s easier than ever to get one, and so many still refuse, and the hospitalization rates are climbing. We see so many stories of people hospitalized now saying they wish they had gotten vaccinated. I see GoFundMe campaigns raising tens of thousands of dollars to cover hospital and funeral costs of people who refused a free vaccine. It’s just such a waste.
I feel so much dismay just sitting here on my couch, largely removed from the crisis unfolding behind the closed doors of hospitals. I can’t imagine the frustration and desperation of the healthcare workers handling another wave of COVID, having to hear the patients who can still talk expressing their regret about not getting the vaccine. Or those treating children who of no fault of their own were not adequately protected by the adults around them.
It did not have to be this way.
— Lauron Fischer
Lauron Fischer is a Special Projects Manager for the city of San Antonio. She is a brain tumor survivor, a public health advocate, and a friend to many. She lives with her partner Colin Meyer and their daughter Sloan in Olmos Park, TX.
During a recent conference call, my colleague Andrea Thomas said,
“Our thoughts, feelings, and actions are all connected. If one isn’t feeling right or working in the way that we’d like it to, we can change one of them, and the others will shift too.”
This is true, but we rarely think about it. It’s somehow simple and anything but simple at the very same time.
Which of these do we want to shift?
Which of these do we need to shift?
–Renee Roederer
You are loved as you are.
You’re
worth it.
fabulous.
Not when you,
Not if you.
You, right now,
Loved presently,
Loved thoroughly,
Loved wholeheartedly.
Worth it.
Fabulous.
I was spending some time with people at a barbecue held by the Ann Arbor Friends Meeting. When I won the game of Get-To-Know-You Bingo — you know, that game where people attach people’s names to various details on the squares? — my prize was a Black Lives Matter sign for my yard.
I love Quakers.
–Renee Roederer
In these days we’re living, do you feel overwhelmed by the news cycle?
Yes, me too. Of course. Who doesn’t?
Behind the news cycle, there are real, raw, human stories of suffering. And so often, we feel helpless to prevent that suffering and powerless to change it.
It’s incredibly understandable to fall into those feelings. In such times, we need the solidarity of one another – that is,
. . . the sense that we are in each other’s view, that we encounter each other’s pain with empathy,
. . . the sense that we have each other’s commitment, that we are in each other’s corner for the long haul,
. . . the sense that we have each other’s action, that we covenant to act on behalf of one another, especially and most readily for the vulnerable.
In my Christian tradition, our scriptures speak to a calling of bearing each other’s burdens. Lately, within that calling, I find myself encouraging people to shift each other’s burdens.
We can easily become incapacitated once we realize we cannot instantly fix the systems that are causing burdens. But our empathy, and most importantly, our committed action can change these systems and these burdens. Do not underestimate what these can do.
When we see pain for what it is, we add our validation, and it shifts burdens.
When we add our resources of money, time, or skills, it shifts burdens.
When we use our voices to name wrongs for what they are, it shifts burdens.
When we use our minds to create solutions, it shifts burdens.
When we put our bodies in places that disrupt harm, it shifts burdens.
When we honor the humanity of people who are being dehumanized, it shifts burdens.
When we take direct action and demand justice for the oppressed and vulnerable, it shifts burdens.
If we want to change the large-scale systems that cause harm, we have to disrupt and dismantle them. But alongside that commitment, we have to live and model our lives with a different rhythm – with different commitments and ways of relating to one another.
We practice solidarity.
And within that way of living, we share and lighten the loads that people are carrying. We assign energy and responsibility to where they really belong.
We shift each other’s burdens.
Smuggling Grace 