This week has been crazy, and I’m struggling with what to say as a spiritual reflection. As summer transitions into winter, as my part of the world experiences (yet another) preventable spike in pandemic numbers, as we prepare for yet another highly-contentious election, I find myself facing this growing desire to stomp off in disgust – from the human race.

Okay, I get like this every Fall. Every Fall, the earth does this thing where due to axial tilt days get shorter and I get grumpier. Every. Single. Year.

In my not so humble opinion, the world would be a much better place if we could all chill out a second. Stop letting ourselves be manipulated by emotions and appealing sound bites. It always makes me think of Orwellian type idolatry of the uber-creepy kind, when people refer to ANY leader as if they were the Second Coming – or the Antichrist.

In undergrad, symbolic logic may have been my favorite non-lit course. I love logic. I love stripping down propositions and laying down if-then statements to examine my thinking. We should all try it sometime.

Like pretty much everyone else on this planet, I agree that things need to change. I also think Gandhi put it well:

Seriously, point blank, I often want to tell most of the human race something like you SAY you want to change. Based on actions, though, it seems to me what we really want is the maximum amount of feeling good with the minimum amount of effort.

Right? Let’s be honest here.

Change is hard. It requires actually thinking things through, listening to people who think differently from you. It means resisting the urge to go for the low-hanging fruit – which is just more of the same. In the end, it all too often means a futile, useless struggle while the rest of the world shrugs and keeps walking.

That’s how the Gospel works. In season or out of season. Likely to do any good or not.

Do the right thing anyway.

P.S. God loves all of us. Pass it on.