This has been an odd week in the USA and world, and one in which we need to exercise caution (not panic). A friend of mine, when I said all sports were being canceled, said “Maybe we’ll reorder our lives in a better way.”

Which is what Carmen Imes is suggesting in this list of what we CAN do:

We may not personally feel at risk, but there are people in our circles who are. Taking precautions protects them, too. It's not a matter of fear, but of love. If you don't like people telling you what you CAN'T do, here's a list of what we CAN do:

We can wash our hands more thoroughly and more often. We can minimize human-to-human contact. We can regularly disinfect door handles, light switches, and hard surfaces, even if it's not in our job description. We can cancel or postpone unnecessary meetings. We can think creatively about how to be the church even when we can't meet in person. We can think creatively about how to teach online. We can refrain from stockpiling resources that everyone needs, such as toilet paper. We can offer to pick up groceries for friends who aren't safe to go out. We can offer to pray over the phone with those feeling anxious. We can text and email to check on people we would normally encourage in person. We can curtail all unnecessary travel and take a hard look at what seems necessary. We can pray for stamina for health care workers and let them have the masks. We can pray for wisdom for civic and community leaders who are making difficult decisions. Above all, we can STAY HOME if we have a fever or cough.

A pastor friend posted on Facebook that all meetings of more than 250 people in the state of Washington were strictly prohibited, including churches, for the while (Oregon made a similar announcement today, and so did Alberta, just a few moments ago). Someone responded angrily, implying that this is a breech of first amendment rights--the right to congregate. He seemed to feel this was a form of persecution. Please hear me: This is not religious persecution and it's not unbridled fear. Quarantine is a form of love. Experts are telling us this is the best way to stop the spread and protect the vulnerable in our communities, and that we need to act fast to have the highest success rate. So for the love of God and the love of your neighbor, stay home.

Maybe COVID-19 will re-teach us what we have forgotten--that we are made for embodied community. As wonderful as social media is, it can never replace a handshake or a hug. And as inspiring as online sermons can be, they cannot replicate the taste of bread and wine or deep-throated song in community. This quarantine won't last forever. Hopefully it will be just long enough to help us more deeply appreciate that we were made for each other and that we can't be fully ourselves in isolation. See you on the other side!

Thank you Maya:

By Tim Stelloh and Blayne Alexander

A Missouri judge on Monday overturned the convictions of a man whose case had been championed by WNBA star Maya Moore, court records show.

In a 37-page order, Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green ruled that prosecutors had suppressed evidence in the burglary and assault case against Jonathan Irons, who was convicted in 1998, when he was 16.

Irons was tried as an adult and sentenced to 50 years in prison after authorities charged him with breaking into a home in the city of O'Fallon, outside St. Louis, and twice shooting the homeowner after he was found hiding in a bedroom closet.

Moore, a five-time all-star with the Minnesota Lynx who took a sabbatical this season to advocate for Irons, first met him in 2007 during a visit to the Jefferson City Correctional Facility.

The two were introduced by Moore's godparents, who had met him through a ministry outreach program.

"Let Justice Roll like a River today," Moore tweeted Monday, citing a Bible passage.

In the order, Green called the prosecution's case "very weak and circumstantial at best." No physical evidence was found linking Irons to the crime, and he said the testimony of the only eyewitness was "dotted with inconsistencies."

Authorities also failed to turn over a fingerprint report that would have bolstered Irons' defense, Green wrote.

Alexandra Styron on “cultural appropriation”

couple of news cycles ago, I came upon a Facebook post about the Jeanine Cummins novel American Dirt that hit close to home. Although the book had debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times Best Seller List, criticism was raining down from all corners: It wasn’t good. It wasn’t realistic. It wasn’t deserving of the money and advance praise that had been heaped upon it. Above all, Cummins was being called out for appropriating the immigrant experience, and for worrying that she might not be “brown enough” to tell the story but doing it anyway. In the Facebook post, a friend said she found the charges leveled against Cummins “frightening.” “After all,” she wrote, “William Styron wasn’t a female Holocaust survivor.”

No, he sure wasn’t. In addition to being my father, William Styron was a literary lion of the sort that roamed the cultural savanna in the mid-20th century. His stature, and his privilege as a white man, gave him cover when he created the tragic namesake of his 1979 novel, Sophie’s Choice. My father expected some blowback: “The next few months are going to be very lively,” he wrote to my sister after getting an earful from the critic Harold Bloom. Jewish critics, in particular, detected strains of anti-Semitism in a Holocaust novel whose heroine and creator were both Gentiles. But the book garnered overwhelming praise—Sophie’s Choice was, by most accounts, a very good novel—and the trouble soon died down.

I suppose you could call it luck. The political doldrums during which the book arrived certainly eased its passage. But the creation of Sophie’s Choice was nevertheless an act of stunning audacity from a novelist who’d been down this road before: A dozen years earlier, my father had published The Confessions of Nat Turner, told from the point of view of the African American preacher who led a four-day slave rebellion. With the possible exception ofHarriet Beecher Stowe, my father was the first novelist in modern history to be accused of cultural appropriation. That experience, and what he made of it, reflects complicated truths about mid-century American culture, and maybe offers some guidance for our own contentious times. …

Since American Dirt, plenty of wisdom has been dispensed not just on the matter of who can tell other people’s stories, but how it should be done. Sensitively, of course, and without stereotypes or presumption. By rooting your narrative in truth and checking your facts. To these prescriptions, my father might add a couple more, in line with something Hannah Arendt told him when he expressed his worries over whether he could tell the story of a concentration-camp survivor. “An artist creates his own authenticity,” she said. “What matters is imaginative conviction and boldness, a passion to invade alien territory and render an account of one’s discoveries.”

A very good and interesting interview by John Turner with Abram C. Van Engen about City on a Hill about “American exceptionalism” and the difference “America First” means:

JT: In your closing chapter on Donald Trump and “America First,” you suggest that now that historians have torn to shreds the flimsy foundations of Pilgrim/Puritan-linked American exceptionalism, we might miss it. Now we’re just left with greedy defenses of American sovereignty. Am I reading you correctly? Do we need some sort of more inclusive, less date-specific, less Christian, less Eurocentric American exceptionalism?

AVE: The best part about being a scholar is that I do not need to be a politician. The tasks and methods differ. Good politicians might sometimes need to conform their work to certain terms of American exceptionalism in order to get the job done. Good historians do not.

In my last chapter I explain how “America First” differs sharply from the rhetoric of American exceptionalism. American exceptionalism narrates a history based in high ideals, like liberty, democracy, self-government, prosperity, and so forth. It is often blind to anything in American history that contradicts those ideals—and blind as well to the way other countries instantiate those ideals—but it is nonetheless a language of history and a language of ideals.

America First is not. It doesn’t bother with history. It has little interest in discussing democracy, liberty, or all the rest. It is a language, instead, of sovereignty and self-interest. Those are the twin concepts that matter most. In the rhetoric of America First, every nation is basically the same: each is locked in a zero-sum struggle, where the point is to win and where winning makes others lose. “I want to take everything back from the world that we’ve given them,” Donald Trump declared. When he won the 2016 election, he never embraced American exceptionalism and never referred to the United States as a “city on a hill.” In fact, those who turned to this rhetoric on both the left and the right were those who most strongly opposed the rise of Trump.

That “authentic self” might not be all that authentic:

Everyone wants to be authentic. You want to be true to yourself, not a slavish follower of social expectations. You want to “live your best life,” pursuing your particular desires, rather than falling in line with whatever everyone else thinks happiness requires. Studies have even shown that feelings of authenticity can go hand in hand with numerous psychological and social benefits: higher self-esteem, greater well-being, better romantic relationships and enhanced work performance.

But authenticity is a slippery thing. Although most people would define authenticity as acting in accordance with your idiosyncratic set of values and qualities, research has shown that people feel most authentic when they conform to a particular set of socially approved qualities, such as being extroverted, emotionally stable, conscientious, intellectual and agreeable.

This is the paradox of authenticity: In order to reap the many of the benefits of feeling authentic, you may have to betray your true nature.

From a psychological science standpoint, a person is considered authentic if she meets certain criteria. Authentic people have considerable self-knowledge and are motivated to learn more about themselves. They are equally interested in understanding their strengths and weaknesses, and they are willing to honestly reflect on feedback regardless of whether it is flattering or unflattering.

Most important, authentic people behave in line with their unique values and qualities even if those idiosyncrasies may conflict with social conventions or other external influences. For example, introverted people are being authentic when they are quiet at a dinner party even if social convention dictates that guests should generate conversation.

But a number of studies have shown that people’s feelings of authenticity are often shaped by something other than their loyalty to their unique qualities. Paradoxically, feelings of authenticity seem to be related to a kind of social conformity.

Adopt that dog:

(CNN)It took a billboard, social media campaign and more than five years of searching. But doggo Merrick finally found his furrever home.

The six-year-old pup had lived at the Humane Society of Greater Kansas City for most of his life, and was the longest resident there. The shelter had tried everything to get him adopted, and on Wednesday they finally succeeded.

"It was love at first sight," Jordan Nussbaum, Merrick's new owner…

"What they wanted was someone without kids who had a lot of energy to keep up with him because he's a large dog. But he's still a puppy. It just seems like I was destined to be with him."

Yes, “insect” butter:

GHENT, Belgium (Reuters) - Belgian waffles may be about to become more environmentally friendly.

Scientists at Ghent University in Belgium are experimenting with larva fat to replace butter in waffles, cakes and cookies, saying using grease from insects is more sustainable than dairy produce.

Clad in white aprons, the researchers soak Black soldier fly larvae in a bowl of water, put it in a blender to create a smooth greyish dollop and then use a kitchen centrifuge to separate out insect butter.

“There are several positive things about using insect ingredients,” said Daylan Tzompa Sosa, who oversees the research.

“They are more sustainable because (insects) use less land (than cattle), they are more efficient at converting feed ... and they also use less water to produce butter,” Tzompa Sosa said as she held out a freshly baked insect butter cake.

According to the researchers, consumers notice no difference when a quarter of the milk butter in a cake is replaced with larva fat. However, they report an unusual taste when it gets to fifty-fifty and say they would not want to buy the cake.

Insect food has high levels of protein, vitamins, fiber and minerals and scientists elsewhere in Europe are looking at it as a more environmentally friendly and cheap alternative to other types of animal products.