Some brothers came to a holy hermit who lived in the desert and outside the hermitage they found a boy tending the sheep and using uncouth words. After they had told the hermit their thoughts and profited from his reply, they said, “Abba, why do you allow those boys to be here, and why don’t you order them to stop hurling abuse at each other?” He said, “Indeed, my brothers, there are days when I want to order them to stop it, but I hold myself back, saying, if I can’t put up with this little thing, how shall I put up with a serious temptation, if God ever lets me be so tempted? So I say nothing to them, and try to get into the habit of bearing whatever happens.” — I should start off by admitting to you that I watch Star Trek. You don’t have to watch Star Trek to understand this blog post, but why wouldn’t you? It’s a quarantine, y’all, and it’s a great show. I do, however, have one problem with Star Trek. Set in a time centuries from now, it depicts the human race as havin
by the Rev. Paul McLain “Syncletia said, ‘The same thing cannot at once be seed and a full-grown bush. So, men with a worldly reputation cannot bear heavenly fruit.’” My hobby in years past was acting in community theatre productions. I played everyone from Inspector Hubbard in Dial M for Murder to King Claudius in Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead. There was something exhilarating about putting on a different persona for a season of rehearsal and performances. Over time, I discovered that my truest performances were when I tapped into something deep inside myself that resonated with the person I was portraying. The irony was that, in order to put on the mask of my character, I had to take off my own mask. Thousands of lives have been lost, and our social and economic lives have been turned upside down by a tiny, hidden microbe. We have learned the destructive power of something we cannot see. And this microbe has torn off the masks of our lives so that we now see that, what a