Welcome to The Light, where we slow down long enough to let the news breathe.
A father's grief is a particular kind of storm. Pastor Greg Locke of Lebanon, Tennessee lost his twenty-year-old son Evan to addiction last week, and in his anguish declared that the devil would repay him a hundredfold. There is something ancient in that language — the wounded heart reaching for a ledger, for justice, for meaning where meaning has gone quiet.
Meaning was also conspicuously absent in Washington this week, where the president told a reporter, plainly, that he does not think about Americans' financial situation — does not think about anybody. Whether spoken carelessly or candidly, the words landed with weight. Honesty and indifference, it turns out, can arrive wearing the same face.
And then there is Jonathan Haidt, who stood before graduating students at NYU this spring and asked them, simply, to pay attention — to resist the fragmented, reactive way we have learned to move through the world. His address drew objections before it was even heard. Perhaps that is itself the argument he came to make.
Three stories, three kinds of attention — to loss, to power, to the wandering mind. That is this hour's reflection. Carry the light gently.
