CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
UKRAINE RELIEF
One of the very best places to donate to help Ukraine folks who are injured and hungry and displaced by Putin’s invasion is UMCOR, which has an A+ rating from the charitable oversight organizations. https://umcmission.org/umcor/
If you designate Advance 982450, 100% of your donation goes directly to Ukraine relief. [Otherwise, it’s 97%, which is still so much higher than any other way of giving. Only 3% for administration.]
MENTAL HEALTH HAZARD
Brain researcher Andrew Newberg says that “…fear-based religions can be hazardous to your health. It’s too bad the Surgeon General can’t place a warning sign on certain passages from the Bible or Koran, especially those that encourage violence toward people who hold different beliefs.” Andrew Newberg, MD, and Mark Robert Waldman, How God Changes Your Brain, p. 62.
MODERN FAREWELLS
Friend of CIW, Nina, says that “good-byes” these days are different. They are not exactly good-bye. She recently had to say “good-bye” to the associate pastor at her church, which included “see you on Facebook.” There are many things I don’t like about FB, and being old and curmudgeonly, I try to avoid it as much as possible, but it really does make staying in touch much easier.
SHORTS CONFUSION
This is a confusing time of year for me. Yes, because of Daylight Savings Time, true, but mostly because of short pants. Congress is fixing to fix the twice-yearly time change confusion by making DST the year-around standard, but I’m not sure they can do anything about my shorts dilemma.
I love to walk in shorts. It’s much easier than long underwear under flannel-lined cargo pants under a parka, the kind of warmth an old man needs in winter. Walking in shorts in winter is my way of sneering at the cold. I love it when I can sneak in a shorts day in winter.
So I walked in shorts to start Feb. Yes, it was almost 60, and sunny, on Feb. 1, in Bloomington. And, yes, the next day it was almost 60 below, and blizzardy. So that day I did not walk in shorts.
In Indiana, it’s hard to know if it is a shorts day. It might be in the morning, but not the afternoon, or vice versa.
That’s okay. My schedule requires only one day per month walking in shorts. More if the weather is okay, but one is enough to make me think I am still a young guy, a shorts kind of guy.
Welcome, Spring!
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