Blog - Suffering

Merry Christmas!

“And Lincoln says to the woman, ‘Madam, do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?’”

“…our thoughts and prayers are not enough.  It’s not enough.”

This year’s Advent launches us into the “Year of Mark,” the period when the primary gospel readings come from, well, Mark, obviously.

Last night, we learned that there will be no indictment of Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown.

So for folks who read my stuff, or have heard me speak, you know that I am ridiculously annoyed with the echoing space in the creed between Mary’s birthing of Jesus and Pontius Pilate’s offing of him.

It’s been a rough couple of weeks, to be sure, in the news here and abroad.

Ten years ago yesterday, all was mostly well in my world.

So, poverty is in the news here in South Dakota.

Tuesday, post Holy Week.

So tomorrow, on Ash Wednesday, many–not all, but many–people in the Christian Church mark the beginning of Lent.

Appropriately, I think, I tend to keep personal updates off of my OMG Facebook page.

Google yields only one pop song, and an iffy one at that, with the word “finitude” in its lyrics.

Within days, our eyes and ears and minds and hearts have drawn in far too much smoke and fire and blood and weeping.

I have Reinhold Niebuhr on the mind these days.

Twice in the last several months I’ve had occasion to tell the tale of the time I stood in front of my late husband’s closet, charged with choosing the clothes in which he’d be buried.

Today, Economic Justice is the OMG topic du jour.

We have been waiting for weeks now to sing that very first verse: “Joy to the world, the Lord is come!”

This blog will be laced with obscenities.

Many years ago, my Grandma Madsen got fired from the Brookings South Dakota jail.