Still strong, strong again...

 Just a minute to write this morning--this is an email I sent to a friend in another country who wrote to me expressing concern and love.

 Oh, also, GZ reminded me of the phrase STAY STRONG that she saw in NZ , so I got out my Southside Strong T-shirt from Covid/George Floyd times here. 

What I emailed my friend (you!):

THANK YOU, friend!
It's really and truly strengthening and heartening that you wrote.
Others have too---like after 9/11--it's such a show of care for Humanity.

I am sort of stunned that we--the city--and the country--and the world--

have to go through this again. I had only this past year seen damaged parts of the city start to revive--like the Uptown.

It feels like a replay...
I HOPE we have learned how to stay on our feet...
Stay strong, stay beautiful...
We shall see.

At least we will not turn on each other, like the way people tore up Lake St in a fit of rage (and opportunism) after the George Floyd murder by a city cop.

Now we have a common enemy, so I hope we will pull together.
I THINK we will... not because of hope, actually but psychology. 
A common foe can unite people.

I'm going to Mass this morning, to the Catholic church two blocks away.
I don't like the priest there, but I hand it to him and that church
 that they have made a home for Latinx community--
tho he's Anglo, he gives mostly Spanish masses.
Immigration is something the Church HAS been good with.

Anyway, for me it's a fill-up station---a place to get a LARGER bird's eye perspective:
 we exist in an infinite universe, 
and a highly personal one--a universe that is experienced by individuals in bodies.

And my friend Mary (Jesus' mom) is there. I don't know why Mary came into focus for me in the past year as a friend, but she has,
And very welcome and timely one she is!
So, off I go.

[end of email]

Stay strong in love, everyone!