Here are three things that have made an impact for me this week. Have a great weekend everyone!

#1

One Star Reviews on Amazon by Fran Lebowitz

So much to love and to enjoy in this piece, if a bit of sarcasm is your thing, from the New Yorker this week.

#2

Going to Bed Hungry from the Washington Post

The above article describes everyday people hit by the crisis of pandemic and making difficult choices. The impact of food insecurity on young persons is especially troubling. As we move through these times and look forward to a new day, it was a reminder to me of the struggles some are having right down our streets. While I am looking forward to eating in restaurants again…some are looking forward to eating regularly again.  And that is just in the US. We received this update from our family members serving in Peru this week. The news is beyond bad.

From my sister-in-law Jennifer in Peru:
We have gone back to extreme lockdown.  Men can go out on certain days and women on the opposite days and only one person from a house at a time for one hour to go to store or get medicine. There are police and blockades.  The government call it house arrest. No one can go to work or make any money.  
We need prayers. Our families are panicking.  We have already gotten calls that they don’t know how they will feed their kids the next 2 weeks during lockdown not to mention pay rent.

We have decided to bring big bags of food, more or less a weeks worth and give 20 families 100 (approx. $27 US dollars) soles to get them through. The government does nothing to help. (They had been feeding 145-160 families a week, just under 500 people)

#3

Our public leadership, almost without exception, has no capacity to imagine outside the categories of these loyalties and commitments. The outcome is the conviction, mostly not articulated, that we are living on borrowed time. As a result, our shrill public discourse is mostly the insistence that we should continue to do what we do, only better, only more vigorously and more adamantly, assuming that if we do so, somehow it will “all work out.”

from Reality. Hope. Grief. by Walter Brueggemann

Well, it didn’t take long for the public discourse in D.C. to return to “shrill” and unity seems to be once again a foggy dream. I have been so pleased that within Lexington things really do appear to be different. Our Mayor Linda Gorton continues to lead, in my opinion, thoughtfully, carefully, and inclusively. Just a hopeful reminder that the peace we so desire will not come from a far away place but it always begins closer to home. May it begin with me. May it begin with us.