4/13/2021

My Dear Friend & POTUS, JRB,          

            As you know it’s Ramadan, & our Muslim brethren will be fasting. I suspect that high school kids will have trouble staying awake in school for the next month. Hopefully, their teachers will know what’s going on. I have only fasted a couple of times in my life, besides the times when I have to do so for a medical purpose. Mark Batterson recommends that when fasting we have an objective & a timeframe. He suggests that fasting is an exercise in willpower, a spiritual workout of putting God before self. Maybe we should give it a try.

            I am thinking about mindsets this morning as I contemplate the violence that I am reading about. I continue to be baffled by the mindset of the Tatmadaw soldiers who are attacking their neighbors. I find it hard to fathom what the BCPD were thinking when they stopped Daunte Wright for having an air freshener obscuring his windshield. I wonder how Noah R Green could become so troubled that he would drive his car into Officer Billy Evans at the Capitol on April 2nd. I puzzle over what the officer in Knoxville, TN, might have said to the kid with a gun in the bathroom Autsin-East Magnet High School that led to a shoot-out yesterday.

            In all of these cases, people chose violence, letting their fear rule their actions instead of  having faith in themselves and their adversaries that we can work it out. Isn’t that what religion is all about? Developing self-discipline not to succumb to our base instincts, but to rise above?

            What would have happened if Officer Kim Potter had a guardian rather than a warrior mindset and instead of thinking of Daunte Wright as a potential enemy combatant, thought of him as a beloved friend?

            Maybe we should have a National fast so we can all conquer our fears & learn to love again.

            PBWY,