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“Drivers are being urged to slow down when it’s raining after almost 3,000 people were killed or seriously injured when driving in the rain last year.”

“In the UK in 2018, there were 6,507 deaths by suicide (a rate of 11.2 deaths per 100,000 people).”

“Public-sector austerity and winter flu have had a negative impact on life expectancy, leaving the UK lagging behind other wealthy nations, a new study has found.”

“In the UK it is estimated that an average of 600 people a year die from complications of flu.”

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Death happens every day of every week of every year.  We accept it.  We expect it (until it happens to us or our loved ones).

I have no idea the final outcome of this global infection.  I have no idea how to stop myself being available for infection – or how not to become an infectee of others.  Every day I meet people and I have no idea who they are.  No idea where they have been or who they are in contact with.  Who they sat next to on the bus, in a restaurant, on a plane … who they stood next to in a lift, walking down the pavement, standing in line to pay for groceries … I have no idea how “self-isolation” works when I live with my wife and our dog and have to do the things that makes living life.

But I do know that bad news sells and good news doesn’t.  Even The Good News has trouble – with not real believers of different faiths/gods, not believers of any faith, and even believers of the same faith who disagree on what the same faith actually means.

I do know that kindness is not good news or bad news.  I do know that love without condition cares not either.  I do know that I can be the best me ever and still not come home tonight. 

So just what am I to do?

I think I will continue to live in the moment.  Maybe pick my nose less.  Wash my hands more.  Fiddle with my chin less.  Cough and sneeze into a tissue more.  All those things my wife would say are much needed improvements.

It seems to me a little like our religious conundrum.

The “who is the correctest of all” debate.  Those who says God is this and that, that God doesn’t like me doing this or believing that.  Who say I must behave and dress like this, be the spiritual head of the house.  Or those who say hogwash.  This is who God is, and God loves me doing this and that.  Who say I needn’t worry about how I dress because I will behave a certain way because God is who he is.  Or those who say that that is hogwash.  And who have a different set of criteria.  Even those who ask what if I don’t come home tonight – what if this is my last day – better fix it right now this second.  Everyone has the correctest bestest way of defining and proving God.

Yet no one really knows.

Not if we are really honest.  Because the bible says whatever I want it to say.  And those qualified in God are only qualified because they gave their teachers the answers their teachers wanted to hear.  And so on and so on – all the way back to when politics and compromise decided what was correctest and bestest (for politics and compromise).

And we have been arguing about that ever since.

I think we like to worry. The bible has a verse on that as well.  The bible has a verse on almost everything.  And a few verses on The Greatest Of These.  AND tons more verses on what that looks like (if we allow).  Those verses resonate with me.  These three letters resonate:

I Am.

I Am Love Without Condition.

Because I think we ALL know where we are with that.

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