From The Deacon's Bench

  WEEDS As I write this, I am able to look out my window and see part of my neighbors’ house.   There is a planting bed running the full length of their house.   I see day lilies and iris plants and then… a giant crabgrass plant.    Oh, the horror, I’m thinking to myself, the neighbors are attempting to sell that house so that weed has to go!!!   If a potential buyer sees that weed, they are going to question the desirability of the entire house and use that as an excuse to offer a much lower price. Suddenly, I started to think about holy scripture, especially this: Jesus Explains the Parable of the Weeds 36  Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.”  37  He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man;  38  the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children...

What is normal?   What is the “new normal”? What will the future normal be? These are the kinds of questions that fill my mind these days.   It seems that no sooner do I come up with an answer, things change, and I realize that my answer is no longer relevant. Just like so many of you, my life has changed significantly over the years.   Some of those changes were good, some were not good, but most of those changes were due to my actions and the choices that I made. Right now, my biggest fear is not what I might do, or the choices that I might make but it is the choices that what my fellow humans might make or the things that they may not do.   They might not use a face mask or covering, they may venture into non social distancing events and stay there socializing, contract the Covid-19 virus and by continuing this behavior pass the virus along.   I have always been proud to be an American.   There have been times when I was not proud of some of the...