#newsamehope / 3.23.20

What is new?

• It happened. First case of COVID-19 at Cook County Jail. A correctional officer tested positive, and I’m so scared for the way it’s predicted to spread in that space. I’m so worried about our incredible students and about everyone else held within those walls. 

• National Guard deployment to Washington, New York, and California.

• Rand Paul tests positive, and Angela Merkel is self-quarantining after her doctor tests positive. 

What is the same?

• Chicago is a jazz musician when it comes to weather. Big fluffy snowflakes to further hush the quiet city. All traces sure to be gone by afternoon.

• Bipartisanship is failing us and getting in the way of getting aid to people who need it.

What is the hope?

• Half source of hope / half pressing need as we go forward... Listening. A good friend wrote that there are people whose lived experience of quarantining contains wisdom that will carry us all forward, but our society didn’t listen to that collective body of wisdom until now. Deep listening is intensely vulnerable because it demands that we are willing to be changed and to emerge from a conversation as a different person. Deep listening is alchemy. Deep listening is not spontaneous. Deep listening is taking off your armor.

Photo: Sandymount, Dublin, October 2017.