Race

As Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) Heritage month came to a close, a passage from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sermon, “When Peace Becomes Obnoxious”, kept ringing in my ears:

[...] and if peace means this, I don’t want peace.

1) If peace means accepting second-class citizenship, I don’t want it.

2) If peace means keeping my mouth shut in the midst of injustice and evil, I don’t want it.

"I walk in the way of righteousness, along the paths of justice" - Proverbs 8:20

At nine years old, I decided I wanted to become a journalist. It was the same time my brother Fred and I started delivering the Chicago Daily News. The newspaper was the third largest circulation behind Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times. Fred and I had twelve streets of subscribers.  We’d deliver the latest news of crime, sports, and advice from Ann Landers. My brother and I tied the papers into travel size and threw them on the porches of two storied brownstones or trekked into apartment building mazes to make sure seniors had their sacred crossword puzzles. 

This could almost become an age-old adage, “It took something so horrible for people to pay attention to…”. We could fill in the blanks with a plethora of choices from the social issue buffet that plagues Canadian societies.

Ponder the path of your feet, And let all your ways be established. - Proverbs 4:26

India’s Covid-19 Crisis

Covid-19 cases in India have overwhelmed the country's medical system.  People are amassing outside of hospitals and the deaths are too numerous to handle in timely fashion.  Into this place we pray:

Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths. - Isaiah 2:3

A Prayer for Daunte Wright’s Family, Friends and Community

On April 11, 2021, Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old African-American man, was fatally shot by Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter during a traffic stop in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area. 

As the world is beginning to reopen and life picks up again, I’m asking the questions: Should life go back to normal? If not, what is the new normal? Have we learned what we should have? Where do we go from here? 

The answers to these questions hold lots of implications. From a political stance- what have we learned? From a racial reckoning stance- what is the new normal? From a pandemic stance - where do we go from here? While I don’t have all the answers to these questions I think I have a starting place. 

"Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye is wasted from grief; my soul and my body also." - Psalm 31:9

When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so bad

(My Favorite Things, Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rogers, 1961)