What’s Not to Appreciate? Thanks, USAF Band for this Holidays Tribute to Our Vets! From Union Station, Washington, DC.

Opening drum roll definitely a musical riff on the work of Gene Krupa. Or, was it Buddy Rich? No matter, this video is to enjoy for pure entertainment and its location in a portal to war and sacrifice for many U.S. soldiers, sailors and Marines, airmen and Coast Guard!

At this time of year, I find myself turning again to the thoughtful posters at Interfaith Partners for the Chesapeake for their message at the holidays.

Jodi Rose’s post is titled “A Light in the Darkness.” Her piece starts: “Mother Theresa will be canonized next September and clearly she was a light in the darkness. Malala Yousafzai is a light in the darkness in her unending fight for the educational rights of girls. Here in Baltimore, Destiny Watford, the high schooler fighting the permit for a trash incinerator in her neighborhood, is a light in the darkness.

“Ever since San Bernadino, the hateful rhetoric in our country has escalated. It can seem very dark these days. Regardless of your religion and whether you are celebrating Christmas this week or not, you crave a light in this darkness.”

The rest of her piece can be found at this link, including a call for donations in support of the amazingly wonderful planet-healing work Interfaith Partners is doing in the Baltimore-Washington region.

Last two items are one, from a Democrat, the President of the United States, and two, from a former Republican senator from Tennessee. Both are men of faith.

From today’s Washington Post piece “The quiet impact of Obama’s Christian faith” comes this excerpt: “The ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It’s the belief in things not seen,’ Obama said at Notre Dame. ‘It should humble us. It should temper our passions, cause us to be wary of too much self righteousness.'”‘

From Sen. Bill Brock: “Were we to doubt a little of our own infallibility, perhaps we might find it within us to listen, to give a little more care to viewpoints that differ from ours, expressing the hope that those who voice them care just as much for and believe just as firmly and fervently in their causes as we do ours. We might find the gift of a solution.”

Among my prayers for the next several days is one for healing in our nation, for a renewed search for community across our land. Community that encompasses the poor, the rich, those of faith and little or no faith, and the many other ways we might name our slices of  life here in this blessed land of opportunity–not only to gain for ourselves but to stretch out a handle to lift up someone else who’s in the ditch of despair or trouble.

FOR THE SINS OF HUMANKIND

PEACE