A bit over six and a half years ago, astronaut Nick Hague recorded a video on the International Space Station. Nothing special there, but this one shows 30 minutes of Earth’s clouds passing by in about 60 seconds.
Just shy of a century back, someone named Coffin took an old Latin song, translated it, and added a couple verses. Including this one:
“…O come, Desire of nations, bind All peoples in one heart and mind; Bid envy, strife and quarrels cease; Fill the whole world with heaven’s peace. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel.” (“O Come, O Come, Emanuel” , verse added by Henry Sloan Coffin in 1916)
A millennium plus a century before that, “O Come, O Come, Emanuel” — or, rather, “Veni, veni, Emmanuel” — got started as a song sung by monks during Advent.
Current events have changed a bit since 2019, 1916, and the eighth century. Human nature, not so much. That’s not a new or original idea.
“…Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we will have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged….” (“On Democratic Government” ; Response to a Serenade, November 10, 1864; Abraham Lincoln (November 10, 1864) via Project Gutenberg) [emphasis mine]
What we’re celebrating today is — I’m putting this mildly — a very big deal.
Celebrating the Messiah and Lord’s Birth
“The Angel and the Shepherds”, James Tissot. (ca. 1886-1894)
“Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock. The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were struck with great fear. The angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying:
“‘Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.’“ (Luke 2:8–14) [emphasis mine]
Two millennia have passed since then. The infant who was and is Messiah and Lord grew up, showing us who and what the Messiah and Lord is.
Then Jesus was tortured, executed, and buried. A few days later he stopped being dead. That made a profound impression on his surviving followers.
Before Jesus left, he told his followers to share the best news humanity’s ever had, with anyone who would listen. So that’s what we’ve been doing. Among other things.
He also said he’d be back, and that’s another topic.
I’ve talked about this, and related matters, before:
“Deck Us All With Boston Charlie” and Walt Kelly’s Pogo characters. (1961)
The fictional Cleaver family, from “Leave it to Beaver”. (1960)
One way or another, families have been in the news this week.
That is not a good thing.
Families gathering on a beach planned on celebrating the first day of Hanukkah last Sunday. Then a father-son duo killed 15 of them and wounded dozens more. That father’s dead now, too.
News media covering the break in finals week routines at Brown University cycled through to discussions of the dead students’ family connections.
Rob Reiner and his wife abruptly stopped living last weekend. Police arrested Reiner’s youngest son, charging him with killing the couple.1
That left me feeling even less happy than usual about what’s in my news feed: which, together with a quote I saw in an Advent calendar, got me started thinking.
Life, Death, and Duties
Me, at my desk, in 2021.
If you’re bracing yourself for a rant about how “All in the Family” and “The Princess Bride” destroyed the American family, or why we need tougher university control laws, relax.
I won’t do that, partly because it’s silly. Besides, there’s a superabundance of sound and fury getting flung around as it it is.
On the other hand, I’ve got a thought or two to share.
For one thing, I think that murder isn’t nice and we shouldn’t do it.
That’s my personal opinion, but there’s more to the idea than a single individual’s preferences.
Since I’m a Catholic, and take my faith seriously, I’ve got some counter-cultural ideas about life, death, and making sense:
Human life — all human life — is sacred, a gift from God (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2258)
Murder, intentionally killing an innocent person, is wrong (Catechism, 2268)
Suicide, intentionally killing oneself, is wrong (Catechism, 2280-2283)
It’s complicated (Catechism, 2258-2317)
For another, families — mom, dad, kids, grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces, cousins and all that — are important. Again, not just my personal opinion.
Families are the “original cell of social life”. Each family matters. But families aren’t all that matters. The top of my priority list is where God belongs. (Catechism, 2113, 2207)
There’s more I could say about families and what I believe. Basically, it’s complicated. (Catechism, 2199-2233)
I’ll settle for sharing an excerpt from something Pope Leo XIV said in June, along with some of my thoughts.
Good Ideas
Pope Leo XIV. (May 8,2025)
“…I encourage you, then, to be examples of integrity to your children, acting as you want them to act, educating them in freedom through obedience, always seeing the good in them and finding ways to nurture it. And you, dear children, show gratitude to your parents. To say ‘thank you’ each day for the gift of life and for all that comes with it is the first way to honour your father and your mother (cf. Ex 20:12). Finally, dear grandparents and elderly people, I recommend that you watch over your loved ones with wisdom and compassion, and with the humility and patience that come with age.
“In the family, faith is handed on together with life, generation after generation. It is shared like food at the family table and like the love in our hearts. In this way, families become privileged places in which to encounter Jesus, who loves us and desires our good, always….” (Homily, Holy Mass for the Jubilee of Families, Children, Grandparents and the Elderly, Pope Leo XIV (June 1, 2025)) [emphasis mine] [second paragraph quoted in USCCB’s Advent Calendar for 2025]
About saying ‘thank you’ every day, I’m pretty sure the pope didn’t mean using those exact words — or even using spoken, or written, language to get the idea across. How we act matters at least as much as what we say. Maybe more. Probably more.
I think an important point is that each of us have responsibilities in our families: children and parents. (Catechism, 2214-2233)
Those responsibilities didn’t stop when I became an adult, or when our children became adults. We’ve still got responsibilities. One of them is not trying to tell my kids how to run their lives. (Catechism, 2232-2233)
For me and my wife, we’ve been blessed with ‘good kids’.
I suspect it helped that we know what we believe, why we believe it, and at least try acting as if what we believe matters.
The kids not making really daft decisions is certainly a factor, too. We’ve all got free will, and that’s another topic.
Not expecting or demanding that this be a ‘perfect family’ — that arguably helped, too.
I’ve talked about, or at least mentioned, this sort of thing before:
“… ‘I grew up in the suburb right next door to Pope Leo, about 14 blocks away from each other. And like Pope Leo, I’m looking for a Church that brings God’s light to the world, His peace, His healing, His love.
“‘I’m also looking forward to ways of doing so, not in a divisive way or tearing people apart, but looking for ways of unity and finding ways to cooperate with each other.
“‘And you brought up Pope Leo: I just want to publicly say I want to cooperate with him. I want to respect his priorities and work with him to help bring those to reality, to light.
“I’m just very grateful to Pope Leo, and I want to say it’s been my joy and honor serving both Chicago and Joliet. And I’m ready, with the help of God, to make this next step into New York.'”
Sound quality isn’t the best, but it’s clear enough.
I’m sharing this because I think there’s some value in reading or hearing what someone says; not just what some expert says he said, or what he really meant when he said it.
The interviewer brought up a hot-button topic, so I’m pretty sure that some folks will be offended by what Archbishop Hicks said. Or what he didn’t say. Or how he said what he did say. Or why the pope shouldn’t have appointed someone whose name is Hicks.
I’m not going to do any of that.
I’m not going to talk about popes, being Catholic, or living in a world where some folks speak languages other than English.
Partly because I’ve already talked about this sort of thing, recently:
Pope Francis and international conference participants in Paul VI Audience Hall, Vatican City. (2024)
There’s a serious side to this, too, since cruise ships are optimized for humans, not owls.
“These Owls Took a Free Vacation on a Cruise Ship—but Soon They’ll Be Heading Home” Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine (December 17, 2025) “A pair of burrowing owls made themselves at home aboard Royal Caribbean International’s Allure of the Seas in February, joining a trans-Atlantic sailing to Spain. They’ll return to the United States next month
“…Nobody noticed the tiny owls until the voyage was already underway. They’d apparently taken up residence in Central Park, a large, green, open-air neighborhood aboard the ship with more than 12,000 plants. Passengers spotted the pair hanging out in the park, as well as at the vessel’s miniature golf course and in the solarium….”
Something like this happened a couple years back when another burrowing owl — just one that time — stowed away on Royal Caribbean International’s Symphony of the Seas.
After folks found this pair, crew members caught them: and then saw to it that they had food and water for the rest of the trip.
At the moment they’re staying at a wildlife rescue center in Murcia, Spain. Wildlife officials in Florida are setting up a return flight in mid-January, followed by release “into the wild—likely, to an urban environment that’s similar to the one they were accustomed to in Miami before they boarded the ship”.
Why they apparently won’t be taken back to Miami? That, I don’t know.
Reading this article was fun, so I figured you might like a heads-up; along with a sample photo and excerpt.
About animals and being serious, I’ve talked about that before:
My memory, like my father’s, is occasionally creative. I remembered a someone writing that England’s public schools were dedicated to the idea “…that Tennyson would never happen again….” Then, recently, I started re-reading a Wodehouse book.
“…It was almost as if these [English public] schools, founded in the 1830s, had it for their main objective that Shelley and Byron would never happen again….” (Introduction by Wilfred Sheed (1975) to “Leave in to Psmith”, P. G. Wodehouse (1924))
That both corrected my memory of the passage and, along with something my oldest daughter showed me, started me writing this post.
“Public” Schools, Puritans, Progressives, and Attitudes
“The foreign church (Roman) declaring war upon our national public school” Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly magazine. (November 8, 1873)
English public schools aren’t “public” the way American public schools are.
In England, “public” schools will take students from anywhere: provided that their parents pay them to process the kids. Over here, we’d call them “private” schools.
American “public” schools are government entities, with a convoluted history going back to colonial days.
Basically, they started with New England Puritans and got a boost in the Progressive Era, so you know they’re a wonderful idea.
“The American River Ganges”, Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly magazine. (May 8, 1875)
Or not, depending on how closely one looks at my country’s history: and, of course, individual viewpoints.1
I think learning to read, write, do basic arithmetic, and getting introduced to various crafts, are good ideas.
I even think that giving the children of recent immigrants, not-so-recent immigrants, and folks whose ancestors made treaties that weren’t recognized until my youth, a ‘This is America 101’ briefing is a good idea. Or could be.
But as the sort of person ardent promoters of American public schools saw as a threat, I’m not a huge fan of the system. Not as it developed.
The year I spent trying to teach in one of these processing units affected, I’ll grant, my perceptions and opinions.
My Year as a Teacher
Dunseith, North Dakota: south of the International Peace Garden and Turtle Mountains.
My first, and last, teaching job was in Dunseith, North Dakota. Then, as now, a few hundred folks call it home.2 Urban amenities like traffic jams and gangs were in short supply, but I liked the town and my neighbors.
The high school: I don’t know what was going on there.
Teachers were, I think, trying to teach their subjects. So was I: English, journalism, and something else I forget.
The folks running the place: again, I don’t know what was going on. I do know that anomalies encouraged me to start a journal, which I later turned over to folks involved with the teacher’s union.
And yes, I was in a union: my first and last experience with that American institution, which is another topic for another time.
The only oddity that stayed in my memory was being told to stand watch outside another teacher’s classroom and report undesirable behavior. I am not making that up.
At the end of the school year, the school administration didn’t renew my contract. I also learned that I was, ostensibly, responsible for the school’s woes — the last half-dozen-plus years of them.
Folks I’d gotten to know there told me that the accusation was, I’ll be polite, a lot of hooey. And standard practice for labeling new teachers who failed to win approval.
At that, I fared better than the school counselor.
The Curious Case of the Vanishing Counselor
He was, ethnically, like many of the students: someone whose ancestors had been here since long before Vikings, and then other Europeans, got interested in this continent.
Part-way through the school year he disappeared, showing up later several states over before coming back to his office.
My guess is that he knew more about what was going on than I did, took what was happening to the kids far more personally, and decided that his sanity would benefit from an unscheduled break in routine.
I hope that unofficial sabbatical helped. I liked him, and think he took what should have been his job seriously.
A Student Newspaper and ‘Problem’ Students
My time there wasn’t all bleak.
As part of teaching journalism, I had the class put together a school newspaper.
They did a pretty good job, and I think they enjoyed what they were doing. Partly, I suspect, because I told them, after sketching out how the publication could be organized, that I was around for any technical questions they had, and that it was their paper: the content was up to them.
There was some sort of dramatic presentation, too, but I don’t remember much about that.
Another high point came as my wife and I were packing, getting ready to leave. A small group of the ‘problem students’ came to apologize for being the reason I was leaving.
I assured them that we were okay, and that they weren’t the problem. I hope I phrased it well enough.
Seriously: they were ‘problem students’, and had attitude in abundance. But, when it comes to that, I have attitude. And I wasn’t facing more time in that institution.
They were — okay, and I was okay with them. I’ll leave it at that.
Making a Difference
The Wee’l Turtle in Dunseith, North Dakota.
Our oldest daughter was very young when we lived in Dunseith. We lived near the school, and near a Dunseith landmark: the Wee’l Turtle, a massive sculpture made of implement wheels, if my memory serves.
She loved that turtle.
Fast-forward about four decades. I remember the turtle, but she doesn’t. She does, however, remember my talking about the school, the kids, and my concerns.
Last week, she shared this with me:
“Hey! Just got this response to a comment I made ranting about your old teaching job:”
‘I’m Crow and my aunt is a retired teacher. I just wanted you to know that there are now many college educated Crow Indian teachers. My cousin’s daughter is a Principal at a small school on the Rez. My cousin is being encouraged to apply for the Principal position at another small town school. My ex teaches Crow Language for grades K-8 at an academy on the Rez. Maybe your Dad taught my cousin or my ex. He made a difference. Let him know.’
(From a Discord chat with my oldest daughter (December 3, 2025)
Following that person’s recommendation, she let me know.
Reading it was a real comfort.
The degree to which I made a difference, that’s something I still don’t know. Not for sure. But it’s reassuring to hear that some good has come out of a situation I was briefly part of.
America’s Founding Ideals, Ongoing Efforts
St. Mary’s in Melrose, Minnesota, a few miles down the road: torched in 2016. (WCCO (June 2016))
Finally, the usual links; this week, how I see America’s ongoing efforts to act as if our founding ideals matter — and living in a country where some citizens don’t approve of people like me:
Something new each Saturday.
Life, the universe and my circumstances permitting. I'm focusing on 'family stories' at the moment. ("A Change of Pace: Family Stories" (11/23/2024))
I was born in 1951. I'm a husband, father and grandfather. One of the kids graduated from college in December, 2008, and is helping her husband run businesses and raise my granddaughter; another is a cartoonist and artist; #3 daughter is a writer; my son is developing a digital game with #3 and #1 daughters. I'm also a writer and artist.
I live in Minnesota, in America's Central Time Zone. This blog is on UTC/Greenwich time.
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Blog - David Torkington
Spiritual theologian, author and speaker, specializing in prayer, Christian spirituality and mystical theology [the kind that makes sense-BHG]
