Northwoods Seelsorger

 As the pandemic hit our shores, I kept thinking about the last great pandemic, the so-called "Spanish Flu." This came a bit over a hundred years ago, time when modern medical science was just coming into its own.  While browsing through a Barnes and Nobel Bookstore, I came across a copy of John M. Barry's The Great Infuenza - The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History . It's a fairly long and somewhat dense book at over 460 pages, but well worth the read.  Barry spends much of the first part of his book taking us back into the nineteenth century and working into the twentieth, chronicaling the development of modern medical science.  One forgets just how limited and 'backward' medicine was even 150 or so years ago, yet also the tremendous advancements that occurred as we moved deeper into the new century.  It was also sobering to read of the incredible impact this deadly influenza had on the world, more deadly, by far, than our current crisis.  World Wa...

 On top of everyone's list of significant events for this past year would be, without doubt, the pandemic.  Seldom does one event impact everyone on the planet.  Mid-March stands as the marker for most of us, the date when our state (and others in similar fashion) essentially shut down in a "Safer at Home" order from our governor.  This came months before the real impact which arrived later in the fall.  Little can prepare you for such a significant upheaval in your personal and professional life.  Fortunately, as of this day, the first day of the new year, our family is still COVID-free.  However, the devastation of the virus did leave its mark, as among the 13 I buried this past year, two of my members died of complications from COVID.  "Comorbidity" is now the word.  They were both in their 80s, so were 'high risk' and I'm sure that the official cause of death may have listed something else. But others around me would also experience death...