Buddhists walk for peace in my Carolina Winter while I, a Baptist/Quaker, walk their Monks’ Trail in Chiang Mai. Here in Thailand it is hard to see the mountains through the blizzard of campaign signs for their election February 8th. The campaign is skewed by live fire border conflict with Cambodia that makes this Buddhist nation think more about their military than their monks, but nothing remotely as brazen and raw as my own country. The people here will vote and the government will be who they choose. I am not sure that will happen for my people as the increasingly brazen, desperate man coming apart in real time on world screens simply can’t afford one.

Radical non-conformists built this first Friends meeting house in Skipton in 1689 when slavery was utterly normal. TC and I got back from England some weeks ago but writing is harder here. Especially as I agreed to teach an online asynchronous Divinity School class next semester. I didn’t quite grasp that  this requires all 14 weeks of the teaching in advance by video. Yikes. It’s on the Leading Causes of Life, and I’ve got lots of help. But rather pushed my blog writing to the side. ///// This is surely the worst Christmas since the slaughter of the innocents.

Prayer After the Shutdown VoteFor Those Living Between Relief and Uncertainty Shared on the Moral Monday. Repairers of the Breach Clergy Call November 11, 2025.By Rev. Dr. Hanna R. Broome Eternal God, who is called by so many names,Known in every tongue, worshiped in every land—we stand today between almost and not yet.The Senate has spoken, the votes are counted,

I have a friend whose life has led him to be one of the most powerful Republicans in the North Carolina state legislature, marked by his tenacious commitment to expand Medicaid. He is a grandfather, a religious man with a diligent spirit. I reached out to him a few days ago, knowing he would be voting in a razor-thin decision to gerrymander one more Congressional district to support the desperate effort to protect MAGA. North Carolina is 50/50 Democrat to Republican voters, but our state legislature is ridiculously gerrymandered into a Republican “supermajority”, dependent on his vote to make it 11-3 guaranteed GOP districts.

I was supposed to be in India two weeks ago to participate in the Christian Medical College of Vellore’s strategic conclave and to attend the astonishing Sikh Sathya Sai Grama in Bangalore. Instead my visa got caught in the US government’s sabotage of international relations. You can imagine how badly I felt to not be in these sacred places at this time so pregnant with possibility and, yes, danger. The Sikh based One World One Family Foundation supports the Sri Madhusudan Sai Global Humanitarian Mission that provides essential services in 5 world regions, to over 100 countries, and maintains 12…

The Ribblehead Rail Viaduct is a wonder, but like the US Constitution it did not anticipate all the challenges it would face. The founding brothers of the United States of America crafted an exquisitely complex array of checks and balances, anticipating craven behavior by tyrants. Like the stone pillars of a high arch built to defy gravity, ice and wind by carefully balancing opposing forces, they expected an American King George rather like our current imitation. They worked fast as best they could in a hostile time, but could not think of everything; such as the weak behavior of Congress collapsing like bricks made of poor clay.

Before one trusts a fence, make sure it is attached to reality. I am so weary of the certainties. Not all of them are cynical, but all easily bent to serve bullets, venom and snark. It is hard to take the whole category of certainty seriously and do not wish to contribute to the cacophony. I must admit that I have contributed more noise than most and, from time to time, been more certain. These days I am learning from those who think differently about thinking. Less talking; silence best of all.

Cagn Cochrane. What to do? Amid a paralyzing deluge of dismal surprises we ask simply; what to do? I was surprised to learn there is a whole violent alt-right movement to the far right of the young Turning Point man killed in Utah. He died doing a very American thing—speaking freely--although I disagree with his viewpoints. I’ve known young men like Kirk, so I wonder how he would have evolved as many like him do. I’m so sorry he fell to cowardly violence. We are well and truly off any map.

You and I are made up of 30 trillion cells and about 38 trillion microbes. Most all of that colony works like a family. No small part of that is our immune system which recognizes the other viruses that like to eat us for lunch. Those might snack on your daughter if they notice her parents did not get her vaccinated. Public health and faith are like the social immune system. When disingenuous blather breaks it down the virus notice the opening for every kind of infectious disease. The Navajo Nation was severely affected by COVID19.

A year ago today TC and I woke up on a narrowboat, not knowing that our lives had changed quite profoundly. We had rented it with her sister Lisa and David to putter up the Leeds and London canal toward Skipton. We noticed a Victorian house across the hedge. Last summer TC and I had flourished like graduate students in Glasgow and were committed to steer toward happy. They lived in a Glasgow flat and felt a houseplant needing a bigger pot so when David noticed the house was for sale I uttered, “you buy the house; we’ll buy the boat.” They did within weeks, we did in January then moved on board in May and here we are afloat.

Public health holds many inconvenient truths. Some demand highly technical digging to find the evidence buried in the behavior of living microbes. The vaccines built on that train of evidence interrupt that behavior in ways that are near miraculous, but with variations that infuriate those who want certainty and someone to blame. Bullets lace the CDC encouraged by the lies of our tragic disgrace of a secretary of health, appointed and tolerated by a tragic disgrace of a president. Most of what public health inconveniently knows is not as subtle as a vaccine, but self-evident.

Sunday night on our canal narrowboat often involves sunsets and pub music. But Monday morning usually finds me trundling down the towpath a quarter mile to dump our 35 pounds of the week’s waste. The technology involves a plastic cassette and a special little building to which we have a key. Still, not much different from thousands of African townships in which this is done with open buckets. Likewise, we keep an eye on our fresh water that lasts about a week. But TC unlike African women, she does not have to walk miles with the water tank on her head.

Gawflat Meadow in Skipton, Yorkshire, retrieved from decades of trash. A good place for a prayer about trash collectors. More lives have been saved by trash collection than all the pills and stainless steel combined. I find this comforting guidance as I wonder how to be relevant in our social political dumpster fire. It has always been inconvenient to know that public scale contagion is unnecessary. And deeply annoying that this makes it immoral. Many deadly phenomena have patterns: vehicles injuries (hence seat belts and motorcycle helmets), the long gestation of cancer (hence smoking and environmental laws).

Sunset through the chapel of the women's chapel on Iona, Scotland. Women prayed here long before the Christians showed up in 563. Plague and contagion are a recurrent part of human life at every scale. During the last plague—COVID-19-- the humans were more or less on the same side. At least they were until some saw political profit to be made in disabling the social body so that we lost our mind. COVID-19 killed somewhere north of 6 million people and it’s not over: 1,001 died yesterday. It dropped me to my knees.

Seeds fulfil their role when released by fire. And wise humans can help them. So we learned at the McElvoy Ranch in Montana. "The arc of history bends toward justice," promised Dr. King. I was saved for the church and America by exactly that promise. I had decided as a Vietnam era student at Wake Forest to turn from my military family, suburban Jesus and American war-making when chaplain Richard McBride stopped me. He noted that I was nearly ignorant of my faith tradition beyond the tiny suburban rivulet I had dabbled in till then.

I have some thoughts about July 4th but will save mine for a couple of days. I can’t possibly do better than Dr. William Barber and Fannie Lou Hamer. TC and her twin sister Lisa were born in Sunflower County, Mississippi 500 feet from where Hamer is buried, delivered by the same doctor who identified Emmet Till after his heinous murder. White liberals (like me) should hold silence on this day and listen—then follow—the courageous prophets such as Dr. Barber who know what to do. The following was his post today:

These radical non-conformist Quakers built this very first meeting house where we met this morning in 1689. That’s a lot of stupid wars ago. Two hundred Quakers are buried in these stunning gardens, their lives continuing to nurture the lives and hopes of us now. So, what could go wrong? A 79 year old man surrounded by people who cannot possibly stop him just busted a bunker of an 86 year old man surrounded by advisors with the identical intellectual and spiritual bandwidth. Of course the world is better if Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons.

Democracy is like a meadow, dependent on grown-ups acting wisely over time, which creates space for radical abundance. Gawflat Meadow, Skipton, North Yorkshire. Maybe you’re thinking that the tanks, drones and bunker-busters have a point. If something needs crushing, there are tools at hand that crush. And their promise seems so oddly clean; “once and for all.” Bust the bunker and be done. Why bother with the dubious prospect of persuading people to think differently, be they Iranians, MAGA, or my deep blue peeps. But it never works. Ever. Not once.

Belle Vue Cotton Mill used to dominate for miles with thread wove of slave-raised cotton. All gone, but the building is good for techies now. Our boat way down in the lower left corner on the canal that used to bring the cotton. We live only if we are connected. The FaithHealth networks in Winston Salem were so woven into the neighborhoods that somebody on the team knew every single homeless person by name. And where the Mayor ate lunch (West End Cafe). Thin filaments of trust, subtle as the forest mycelia, threaded every neighborhood including even into the Sherriff’s Office and, yes, ICE.

The many paths of the Mississippi North of Memphis. Drawn by Kathryn Gunderson for the Cover of Religion and the Health of the Public (Cohrane and me, Palgrave). How does power work in a time of no boundaries, rules, or words that mean anything? Robert Reich, who is normally pretty smart, said the other day that power is a zero-sum struggle; that is, if someone has more, the other has less. There is a limited amount of power; the only issue is who has it. This is a mistake as it turns our attention to…

TC and I arrived in Skipton, Yorkshire (UK)  Tuesday to live for a while near her twin sister Lisa. On Thursday an urgent pounding on the door revealed an anxious Royal Mail man gingerly holding a box of 10,000 loud bees that we had ordered from Abelo in York. He did not stay for the congratulatory selfie. Buckfast Bees nestled into the hawthorn hedge by the Leeds and London Canal. We introduced the bees into their box nestled into the hawthorn hedge bordering the canal behind Lisa and David’s home. The honeybees were a nucleus 5 frame hive of Buckfast bees, a distinctive species developed at…

Part of the historical mural at the Simms Community Center in Happy Hills. The mural was designed by Kayyum Allah, who also guided and instructed the students throughout the painting process. Not that one. White progressives, wondering why the big resistance protests are mostly blue-eyed, are asking Black people, “could you run over that race stuff again?” Like 18th century missionaries mumbling about their position on the Middle Passage. This goes down poorly with the Black women who voted 92% for the Vice President as well as the vast majority of the Black men (who also had empathy for their brothers and sisters who could not vote for a prosecuting attorney of any hue).

Sunrise between Iceland and Greenland. Every morning for a hundred days the Trinity went silent as the breaking edge of the early sun sped past Iceland, Greenland and then onto American soil. Spirit sighed as Son complained, “I saved their ungrateful asses for this kind of behavior?” Godhead was silent as godheads tend to be, but noted that maybe they should have gone with the dolphins as the lead species. "These humans don’t deserve to walk by forests and rivers, much less have dominion." The Three/One gave up and stepped back to let the foolish species simply erase itself.