The first time I remember eating sourdough bread I was seventeen, sitting in a restaurant in San Francisco. There for eye surgery of which I was completely terrified, that fascinating, comforting taste can take me right back to Fisherman’s Wharf even now, some more than forty years later. Did you know there is a sourdough library? writes Frank Lidz in this morning’s Times. It lives eighty-seven miles southeast of Brussels, Belgium, and it’s run by Karl De Smedt.
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As I’m sure you know, I start the externally-focused part of each day with the news. (Prior to that is my time for spiritual practice, but that’s another essay.) This morning’s offerings struck me upside the head with the notion of POV—point of view. In fact, I might go so far as to say that the entirety of journalism is an exercise in point of view. Here are some synonyms in no particular order: belief, view, opinion, attitude, feeling, sentiment, thoughts, ideas, position, perspective, viewpoint, standpoint, angle, slant, outlook, stand, stance, vantage point, side, frame of reference. I could go on, but you take my point.
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My homiletics professor said it on the first day of class. “Every sermon must find a common enemy. It doesn’t matter what it is: sin, death, taxes, sex, politics. For a sermon to be effective, you need an enemy.” A marketing guru I’ve recently unfollowed said the same really. “Find their pain—and poke it!” It’s certainly a theme in the historical rendering of the behavior of the United States during World War II. A meme for WWII: “We had a common enemy that made us come together.” The question I wish to ask today isn’t about our common enemy. A six year old could tell us it’s the coronavirus.
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It’s time for True Confessions. I wrote recently that a friend had sent my husband and me two masks as we couldn’t get any here in the Hudson River Valley. When the envelope arrived, it looked a little the worse for wear. Despite the best efforts of the USPS, that happens sometimes. We opened it to eight blue latex gloves, and a number ten envelope that had one mask. Without so much as a breath, a thought, a reservation, I said, “Someone’s stolen one.”
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