3 things

I have been away from blogging for a couple of weeks while I spent pretty much all my spare time researching my family history. Yes, the ancestry bug bit me hard. I decided I would trace each known line of grandparents back as far as the one who immigrated from the old country (almost always England).

This turned out to be a pretty all-consuming project, but one that I thoroughly enjoyed. I made lots of discoveries and am now in the phase of making sense of these thousands of family-history data points.

Still, I'm aware that no one's family history is as interesting to others as it is to the members of that family (and not even all of them). The truth is, most of this information is pretty unimportant. Does it really matter that an ancestor was on the Mayflower, or was a general in some war, or led a rebellion against a king, or stole a horse, or spent time in prison? Honestly, I don't feel any pride (or horror) about my ancestors, only curiosity.

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So I was not only away from blogging, but away from reading the news (well, more or less) and keeping up with all the latest controversies. Not entirely away from it, but mostly. I gather that things happened on the world stage while I was away, and some people are very outraged, and some other people are sadly deluded, among many other possible mass responses. 

Well, the summertime is traditionally America's time to take a break from the news anyway. Baseball started up again, and I am strangely uncaring. There's an election on, but what does it matter? I've heard rumblings about violence in the streets, but my local streets are calm, and as for the national scene, I'll lay odds that the bigwigs will mishandle, make egregiously worse, or generally botch their response to whatever is going on. We do live under the incompetent state, you know (and that is not intended as a knock at Trump).

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And for the third thing, how about the prayer of St. Francis (so-called). 

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me bring love.

Where there is offence, let me bring pardon.

Where there is discord, let me bring union.

Where there is error, let me bring truth.

Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.

Where there is despair, let me bring hope.

Where there is darkness, let me bring your light.

Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.

O Master, let me not seek as much

to be consoled as to console,

to be understood as to understand,

to be loved as to love,

for it is in giving that one receives,

it is in self-forgetting that one finds,

it is in pardoning that one is pardoned,

it is in dying that one is raised to eternal life.