Thinking Outloud

It's been awhile since I was up north, to Duluth and beyond. I'm going to visit today. I worked in northern Wisconsin for 12 years as a pastor of three different parishes. I loved many of the people I served, but none more than the friend I am going to see. We have held ourselves together through teenagers (hers), a wedding (mine), work system nightmares (both), cancer, deaths and funerals, births (my children, her grandchildren) chronic health problems, educational endeavors (both of us), aging and the general pressures of time and distance. We love looking at the world together, and from quite different points of view. We are blessed to have found each other and to have remained friends for over two decades.  Who in your life is the same kind of gift of God, a similar lens through which you see yourself and the world more gracefully, more lightly than you do alone? Give thanks to God for them. Cherish your relationship enough to go out of your way to stay connected. Oul

Today is 9/11. The bells toll, and the wars continue. In an email from our school district, we have been informed that the H1N1 virus is up and running. Several children have tested positive, and we are all encouraged to be alert and aware. NPR reported this morning that a single vaccination (instead of two) may be all that is needed to immunize adults, allowing more vaccinations to go to more people this fall. In listening to the media coverage of this story, I've learned that in an average year, fully 36,000 people die from the seasonal flu virus. That's an average of 720 people per state. Do you know any of them? The predictions for this winter imagine up to 90,000 deaths from H1N1. That would be an average of 1800 deaths per state. The primary difference being many of those deaths are predicted to be our healthy, robust children. I want to be ready. I will get my family immunized. But in the meanwhile, in the midst of the preparations, I have been wondering: what