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Meditations on COVID-19
Catherine of Siena has a particularly relevant story as our world faces what could be the Black Death of MMXX. One hundred seventy years before the Protestant Reformation, the plague of the day swept through Siena, and by AD 1349, half the population was dead. Half. Fifty percent. Not one percent. Not two percent. Fifty. In some places even sixty percent. They didn’t have tests. So maybe somebody exaggerated. So let’s just round down to fifty. In the middle of this—the first of several such pandemics—Catherine was born. Her parents’ twenty-fourth child, Catherine lost a twin at birth. A younger sister after her died as well, making Catherine the youngest of a…
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For One of the Least of These
Someone call Child Protective Services. Currently over 2000 abused children wait in detention centers at the U.S/Mexico border after separation from their parents who crossed the border illegally. Earlier this year the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) started dividing families caught crossing the border without papers based on a “zero tolerance” policy on immigration. Even breastfeeding infants got snatched from their mothers. As a pediatric healthcare worker I can attest to the fear and anxiety that wells up in a young child detached from a parent even for a few moments to obtain x-rays. The White House (after much uproar)…
