Everything is different, and yet everything is the same. The most important people are still the most important people. The most important things are still the most important things. And yet, everything seems different somehow.

I guess it’s not actually that things are different so much as that things have been even more revealed. What was there and true all along is simply no longer as hidden. How drug companies profit. How the poor have less access to health care and technology and education. How the selfish hoard, and are incapable of considering and unwilling to consider the community and the greater good. How little some people respect and value and care for our nation’s aging citizens and family members.

I guess it’s true that adversity brings out the best and worst of humanity, and I am just done with the coverage of and from the worst of humanity. I am done with the fear mongering and the finger-pointing and the projections.

Translate: I am now rationing my news intake. I want to know what’s closed and what steps the CDC says I need to take, but I am *done* with pictures of empty grocery shelves and listening to pundits say the president mishandled this virus situation (is that actually news?) or that kids should or should not be in school. I need to be informed, but I need to balance information with stories and news about the best of humanity. For my own sanity.

You know what hasn’t changed, ever? What was true 6 months ago and 6 years ago and 6 decades ago, and is still true today? People are mostly good. Most people are good. We tend to focus on the small percentage that is bad, and it’s gotten so out of hand that it can seem like the bad outweighs the good – and that’s just not truth.

I believe in science and I believe in God. It doesn’t have to be one or the other; it can be both. I can pray and I can take vitamins and vaccines. And I may even knock on wood. Because I can be a faith person who’s also a little superstitious and who believes that it’s my job to do what I can while letting God worry about the rest. And that’s not awful. I think it’s probably actually pretty normal. And people just won’t admit it because faith people want you to be all faith all the time and science people want you to be all science all the time, and the two are not supposed to mix. But I am faith and science both, and I’d like to say all the time but the truth is sometimes my faith in science and my faith in God can be shaken a little.

Such as when I watch too much news.

I am a person who prepares and also a person of faith. I have a stocked pantry and a stocked bible. I have my doctor and my pastor in my contacts. And this morning I balanced yesterday’s worry about a potential lack of things – the result of too much news intake – with communion, taken with a few dozen strangers, before the sun lit the sky.

And it felt awesome. Awesome to have quiet moments. Awesome to be part of a community of people focusing on the same thing. Awesome to focus on good things at the start of the day. Awesome to throw out old and unhealthy thoughts and fill those parts of my brain with goodness and quiet. Awesome to, for just a few moments, be the child instead of the parent. Awesome to worry about nothing. Awesome to be imperfect and loved anyway. Awesome to be a contradiction and loved anyway.

1 Corinthians 11:28 says, “Everyone should look into his own heart before he eats the bread and drinks the cup.” International Children’s Bible