Check in on your federal worker friends.

“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.“

Who are the mourners in the Sermon on the Mount?

"The mourners are visionaries who ache with the wounds of the world's sadness . . . . (they are) those who have heard the good news of God's good future and weep because it is not yet, still sadly not yet. Their eyes have caught a glimpse . . . 👇🏼

Some men probably do think constantly about the Roman Empire. That could be true. I don’t know. Me? I think about Stonehenge. I think about Stonehenge a lot.👇🏼

Our Nativity scene is packed away, stored safely with the Advent wreath and the other decorations. We've taken down the bows, turned off the lights. Christmas is over. The work of Christmas begins.

The holiday cyber shenanigans have begun! If you get texts like this, do NOT click on the link. The U.S. Postal Service is not texting you from the Philippines to tell you about a package.

Our pup is a bit of a drama queen, so of course she kicked off Thanksgiving by being sick on the downstairs carpet at 5:30 this morning. Currently feeling better and watching the National Dog Show to see what the other dogs are up to this year.

A lovely little poem by Joseph Fasano. There's no condescension in it, no "what's wrong with these kids today," just an acknowledgment that they're a little overwhelmed and some advice from the longer perspective that sometimes the shortcuts offered to us don't lead to any place we want to be.

We all use heuristics - little mental frameworks - to help us make quick judgements, make decisions, and find solutions to problems. Those frameworks get built over time based on our experiences; they are the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, what the world is like . . . (1/4)

“To be bored, therefore, does not mean that we have nothing to do, but that we question the value of the things we are so busy doing. The great paradox of our time is that many of us are busy and bored at the same time.” ~Henri Nouwen

"The way of peacemaking given us may be something so small that it seems hardly worth doing, but it is these small offerings which build your reflexes for the larger ones." ~Madeleine L'Engle, The Irrational Season

“Our world is made up of a myriad of microcosms, of tiny worlds, each with its own habitues, every one known to the others.”⠀
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― Louis L'Amour, Education of a Wandering Man

Love seems like a puny, ineffective response to such a violent and hate-filled world. And yet, it's what we have. Small acts of love, mercy, and compassion to stand up to the wickedness. It's like lighting a small candle in the pitch black night and finding that, somehow, impossibly, . . .