In the dark days of December with the pandemic raging, we hoped for the availability of vaccinations. Vaccinations were announced, the infections seem to be retreating, we began to make plans for travel after the long discontent for our masks, restrictions, and the new normal which we hoped would not become normal at all. And then vaccinations slowed, masks were dropped, the Delta variant spread, fights broke out on airlines, governors levied fines against businesses requiring vaccines even as they claimed federal overreach, and the late summer saw an epic rise among the unvaccinated. A night show host, joking one hopes, suggested that unvaccinated people at the hospital should be a lower triage level than vaccinated people. Schools restarted, closed, went virtual, were protested for requiring and not requiring masks. Nobody likes wearing a mask. Why isn’t everyone vaccinated? What happened to personal liberty? Isn’t this supposed to be over.
But whatever your take on all of this, we are tired – we have pandemic fatigue. Continue reading
Today is the 
There has always been ocean lore that proclaims rogue, monster waves rising 80, 90, or 100 feet high or more. Of course, these are not eye-witness accounts. Men in wooden ships don’t survive such an encounter. There was the story of the Alaskan Tlingit Indian woman who returned from berry picking to find her entire village disappeared. The debris field evidence on the shoreline indicated that the ocean had risen up and fell upon the village. The wave would have been more than 100 feet high to cause the damage. Experts of the day dismissed stories about such waves because they seemingly violated basic principles of ocean physics. 
The “blind leading the blind” is an idiom that can be traced back to the Upanishads (late Vedic Sanskrit texts of Hindu philosophy), which were written around 800 BCE:
Born on June 26, 1580, in Catalonia, Spain, St. Claver studied at the University of Barcelona and joined the Jesuits at age 20 in 1602. While studying philosophy at Majorca in 1605, St. Claver developed a friendship with Jesuit Brother Alphonsus Rodriguez. Br. Rodriguez, who spent his days doing menial work as a doorkeeper, encouraged St. Claver to become a missionary in the Spanish colonies in America. Young Peter Claver left his homeland forever in 1610 to be a missionary in the colonies of the New World. He sailed into Cartagena, a rich port city washed by the Caribbean. He was ordained there in 1615. 
Today, the Catholic Church celebrates 
Our 
