A Pastoral Word on our Cultural Moment 

We are all reeling from the last few months of life in America. The partisan divide between Right and Left, and the level of anger and acrimony, is at an all-time high, into the global pandemic of COVID-19, into a global recession, which so many out of work, or living in fear of a layoff, into a tipping point in the outcry over systemic racism in our country after George Floyd’s murder set off a wave of protest unlike anything in our nation’s history, where for the first time, the vast majority of the population is ready to do whatever it takes to change, into rioting and violence – the cascade effect has felt like wave after wave.