Keeping Me Sane | 6.19.25
I’ve been listening to this and this on repeat this week. They’re both so beautiful!
And then there are these: Can you tell? Dog videos bring me so.much.joy!
These Golden Retriever brothers (Tub and Blue) are OBsessed with sunken tennis balls. I watch and rewatch their videos all the time, and I belly-laugh every time. But then when I saw this video below—based another video of The Golden Brothers, I died. The voiceover is spot on!

If God is going to make all things new, why should we work for good now in this broken world? Why should we care for the environment or improve healthcare or advocate for the vulnerable?
Because we are God's representatives, called to be like him. God is in the business of restoration, healing, and justice, which means we are too.
Two comments on this post that just get it:
Jesus was an AGENT of God’s kingdom—not just preaching it but enacting it, bringing healing and justice to those around him. We who follow Jesus should enact healing and justice in the same way.
Jesus told Peter three times to take care of/feed His sheep. This is how Peter was to show his love for Christ. Jesus wasn’t prescriptive beyond that as far as how to go about doing it, but He did direct Peter to this right after feeding 5,000 people real, tangible, edible (ie., not just spiritual) food. So that’s what we need to be doing. Caring for others - doing the work- do it in the church, the government , the community, the neighborhood - everywhere you can do it. . . . What He asks of us isn’t easy but it’s also not rocket science.
My thoughts on the No Kings Rally that occurred last Saturday, June 14, from John Pavlovitz (because while his words aren’t my own, they express my heart on things so much better than mine do). Any emphasis is mine, however:
I found joy.
There is a silent toll that witnessing so much suffering takes on compassionate people, especially when you work so hard to remain awake and aware. Being reminded every day of just how many human beings are experiencing such wasteful brutality can gradually suffocate the spirit, rendering us joyless. . . . (But) this was not a dour, dismal acknowledgement of defeat, as much as it was a joyfully defiant dance party of pissed off people who haven’t let a minority movement of misery make them in capable of jubilation.
I found hope.
One of the goals of authoritarian regimes is to extinguish the lightness from people; to inundate them with a legion of emergencies and nightmares requiring so much energy to confront that they begin to lose the ability to see anything ahead worth pursuing. When optimism dries up, the future becomes a bleak foregone conclusion. I hadn’t realized I had been chronically emotionally dehydrated. That is until once surrounded by a swirling technicolor sea of activists, fighters, healers, helpers, and dreamers in the blazing North Carolina sun, I could feel hope returning within me: not a naive one that denies the gravity of the moment or the reality of the threats, but a hope that refuses to give this ugliness the last word.
I found America.
There’s been a story that’s made headlines in my head lately: the one of this nation’s certain demise; the one where fascism’s presence will be permanent; the one where we are now hopelessly overrun in both the government and our electorate with violent, hateful, cruel people who find joy in the suffering of others. And while there’s no debating that a sizable segment of America certainly fits that description, the vast majority here (those who made their presence unmistakable felt throughout this nation yesterday by the millions), is comprised of beautiful, loving, patriotic human beings who don’t just believe in the idea of America, they embody it. I remembered that during its nearly quarter of a millennium history, this place has always been a crucible of conflict, because the country we aspire to be cannot be incarnated without it.
I found myself again.
One of the greatest tragedies of the last decade is how wasteful it’s all been: the unnecessary emergencies the fear-brokers have generated, the unrelenting assaults on vulnerable people, the never-ending constitutional crises, the stupefying cruelty, and the collateral damage of trying to hold and attend to all of it. I’m not who I was ten years ago, and some of that is a good thing. But yesterday in the streets of our city, I was able to clarify what matters to me, the things and the people worth fighting for, and the kind of human being I want to show up in the world as.
Yesterday won’t magically rewind the clock pre-election and let us have a do-over. It doesn’t suddenly erase the unprecedented damage to our systems and safeguards. It alone can’t bend the arc of the moral universe in any substantial way.
But for me, No Kings Day was a glorious reminder of how powerful joy, hope, diversity, and our individual and collective humanity are in resisting this Renaissance of hatred—and that we are their caretakers.
I was “yesterday years old” when I learned the difference between an armadillo and a pangolin! What!? I’d heard of pangolins before but I’ve never looked into them.
Then in my morning news newsletter, there was a photo of a pangolin and a question asking if it’s an armadillo. And the rest is history! I feel down the armadillo versus pangolin rabbit hole and spent WAY too much time reading about both.


I have loved this song since I first heard it in 2011 (I had to look up the release year). But this choreography to the song is just so captivating and it makes me love the song that much more! I revisit this video often.
What brought you joy this week? What caused you to think? What made you laugh or cry? Did you learn anything new?
I’d love to know—let me know in the comments!