stfranman Compassionate Living

Where Common Sense and Compassion Meet

As you no doubt have noticed, there has been a lot of discussion — and a lot of legal fights, as well — about what places of worship can or should do while COVID-19 is ravaging our communities and our churches.

For me, it’s really just a matter of common sense. Of common sense and compassion.

To gather for corporate worship is a right, of course. It’s a right in our Constitutional Republic and it meets an essential and deeply-felt need for so many.

But it’s also true that churches — like any other entity or enterprise in our communities — also want to help keep their members and friends from contracting or spreading a serious and sometimes fatal disease.

Some houses of worship did not like restrictions put in place while the epidemic raged. And they took the route of legal action.

Some churches have unwittingly become incubators of this opportunistic virus and have been deeply affected; many have lost members to coronavirus.

It’s going to make this ordeal better — or at least mitigate the damage we’re experiencing — if we take common sense precautions and do all we can to safeguard the health and the lives of all our friends and everyone in the communities where we worship and work.

Brother Ben

© 2020 The Fellowship of St Francis, Inc.

stfranman Living Life

What next? Bill Gates has some thoughts

Like so many of us, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the last few weeks wondering how our current devastating health crisis is going to affect our lives going forward. 

Our lives and our collective life, together, on this planet.

I just came across an article laying out some of  Bill Gate’s thoughts about where we might be heading and it sounded very plausible to me.

I’ve always respected Bill Gates for his obvious business acumen and the visionary way he led Microsoft in its formative period.  

And I certainly laud Bill and Melinda for taking a wide world view and for their extraordinary philanthropy.

I think his thoughts about the COVID-19 crisis here deserve a very wide reading and I recommend this article for anyone who’d like to read some cogent and well-informed thoughts on where we might be heading.

Brother Ben

© 2020 The Fellowship of St Francis, Inc.

stfranman Holy Days and Holidays, Spirituality/Religion

Our Blessed Hope

I most certainly do want to wish all of you a most happy and blessed Easter today.

I don’t have to tell you that our joyous celebration is taking place this year in a most unusual set of circumstances.

Most of us could not gather with fellow Christians in the usual way to celebrate.

The spectre of a deadly and virulent virus stalking our world and our communities has cast a pall over what is typically the most joy-filled time of the entire Church year.

But even in these troubling times, this we know: the hope and transcendent glory of Christ’s resurrection was a stunning, singular event on that first Easter morning and we can feel and appropriate that glory, that blessed hope today just as surely as Jesus’s followers and grief-wracked mother did nearly two millennia ago.

May that blessed hope be yours today.

Brother Ben

© 2020 The Fellowship of St Francis, Inc.

stfranman Compassionate Living, Holy Days and Holidays

Some Love on World Health Day

The 7th of April is World Health Day each year. It’s always a good time to show appreciation to our health care professionals, of course. But that seems all the more appropriate now that COVID-19 is ravaging our world.

Nurses have been there for me in a big way the four times I’ve been hospitalized. One of those involved major surgery and — although that was a very big deal — the care I received from nurses, doctors and techs made a tough situation bearable.

I’m thinking that most of the folks who may read this could say something similar.

I know that many of us have been watching more news than usual while we’re in the middle of this crisis. I certainly have.

It’s striking to me that many in the field — nurses especially — are literally laying their lives on the line to care for their patients.

If you know a nurse — or anyone in the health care field — now would be a good time to show your appreciation for all they do.

A good time to tell them of your appreciation.

A good time to possibly bring over a meal, to watch some children while Mom or Dad is putting in insane hours to care for us.

Especially if they’re living apart from family members now in order to lower the risk of inadvertently endangering their loved ones’ health.

There are so many in that work dealing with a lot of really, really big challenges right now.

I’m so grateful today for our health care professionals. And I’m most certainly going to make it a point to speak those words of appreciation whenever I can.

Brother Ben

© 2020 The Fellowship of St Francis, Inc.

stfranman Living Life, Spirituality/Religion

But not this Sunday

It’s a beautiful Sunday morning here in Florida. Just a few minutes ago, I was looking through a folder of photos I gathered from all over the internet quite a few years ago when one of them caught my eye.

It’s of a beautiful, awe-inspiring Cathedral, and it seems at first to be unremarkable.

But when you pause for just a moment, you realize that there are only a few people in it.

On this Sunday, the photo seems to me to be a pretty potent symbol of what life is like at this moment.

This moment in our shared experience when so many of us are struggling to practice the social distancing techniques we’ve been urged to use.

And we’re trying to wrap our minds around that creeping awareness that it may be quite a while before we can recover, can fully experience again that comforting, life-sustaining practice of gathering with others to share and celebrate our commonality and shared values.

There are many reasons and many ways that people come together. It’s not only gathering for worship on a Sunday morning that many of us are missing right now.

But that’s the part of our shared human experience that’s uppermost in my mind at this moment.

I know that when we can comfortably gather with like-minded folk once again for worship and a thousand other things, we’ll clearly see how very much our lives are diminished when such a precious and vital practice is taken away.

Brother Ben

© 2020 The Fellowship of St Francis, Inc.

Photo credit: Ben is not the owner of the uncredited banner photo and believes it to be covered under Fair Use.

stfranman Compassionate Living

Nurses and Doctors Lay It All on the Line

The first nurse in New York City to die of COVID-19 contracted in the line of duty has passed.

Kious Jordon Kelly had told his family that he thought he had contracted the virus while at work.

He most certainly was right.

He’s passed and his colleagues fear he will not be the last.

Our doctors, nurses and techs–healthcare professionals of all kinds–are on the front lines as the coronavirus ravages our communities.

Pray for them. Pray for them and advocate for those who make decisions to do whatever must be done to get them the tools they need to continue to serve our communities and the patients whose care has been entrusted to them.

God bless Kious and all who are on the front lines.

Take good care of yourselves; there are rough times ahead.

Brother Ben

© 2020 The Fellowship of St Francis, Inc.