I have so many thoughts racing through my head this week.

1. It is the 75th anniversary of what some call a necessary act of war and others (like myself) not-so-privately think of as a terrorist act against a mostly-civilian population: the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
2. Many people I’ve known and forgotten and remembered, who have hurt and helped, who I have forgiven and who have forgiven me in the past.
3. Women of the Church, including – as one friend pointed out – the steady stream of us who have been first villainized and victimized and then eventually canonized by the Church.

There is a pattern here. It’s a vicious cycle, the way we idolize and then burn our idols. The way we cheer “our side” while we defend or deny the kinds of means we use against those on the “other side.” When will this end?

I know what it’s like to be considered crazy by people who at the same time are a little concerned I might not be. I wonder if that’s how the other disciples felt when “some women” came and told them – you’ll never believe what we just saw. Jesus is alive again.

Stranger things have happened. God knows.

It takes courage to get up from the dead, to visit friends knowing everything had changed BUT your love for them. I’ve said this before, but to me the greatest miracle is not that Jesus came bodily back from the dead. As a standalone thing, that’s magic, a trick.

No, the real miracle is that he chose to, that he chooses to forgive the people who murdered him. He chooses to come back to face continued insults against God, to take the kind of throne you only want if you a) are a crazy person or b) love the world a whole, whole lot. Preferably, both.

That’s the blink and you’ll miss it part. That’s the story of SO many of the most precious people I know. The ones who make me look twice. The ones who are probably going to wind up saving the world.

Because, for that kind of thing, I believe God can and will pause space and time for a second. To say, okay, that one is a keeper.