{"id":1619,"date":"2021-06-09T20:49:47","date_gmt":"2021-06-10T00:49:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/?p=1619"},"modified":"2021-06-09T20:49:47","modified_gmt":"2021-06-10T00:49:47","slug":"hello-there-ive-been-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/hello-there-ive-been-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"Hello There… I’ve Been Thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It\u2019s been months since I last blogged and you may wonder why. It started (or stopped) when I took a break after the election in November. It was the first time I had taken a deep breath in years and I wanted to breathe for a while. And then breathe some more. So I chose to breathe and pray in silence. To let the anxiety of the past several years begin to slide off my skin, to breathe it out of my pores, and to rest a moment. So I did.<\/p>\n

And then January 6th<\/sup> happened.
\nJust when I began to hope again.
\nJust when I thought my heart had broken all it was going to break.
\nJust when I was beginning the work of putting my heart back together again\u2026
\nthe \u2018feels\u2019 overwhelmed me.<\/p>\n

So here I am, months later, and I\u2019m thinking again. This is how I know after extended periods of depression, of hopelessness, of grief, and of loss that I am healing. Thinking is like the psychic itch of a wound on the mend. After the feels comes the consideration, the questions, the forward movement.\u00a0 My strength is returning and so is my hope.<\/p>\n

Welcome back to my blog postings. I hope we will breathe and scratch our itches together.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m trying to remember from the ethics classes I took what the first premises are. If I\u2019m not mistaken, the first is that to debate ethics with one another we have to agree on what our shared \u2018authority\u2019 is. Is it the Bible? The Constitution? \u2018Natural law\u2019? And then, again, if I\u2019m not mistaken, we have to agree on our primary values. Is it freedom? Peace? Justice? None without the other? Is it survival? If survival is our primary value we need to dispose of the Bible or the Constitution as our authorities.<\/p>\n

Why am I bringing this up? Well, it\u2019s not to give you a lesson in how to do ethics, thank you very much. I\u2019m trying to figure out why we don\u2019t seem to be able to talk to people who are very different from us. Even about what might seem to be a shared value. Take freedom. When I talk to anti-maskers and they argue that masks infringe on their freedom, I wonder why their freedom supersedes my freedom to be healthy. And then I wonder whether we are talking about freedom at all. Because, let\u2019s face it, we\u2019ve all heard arguments for limitations of freedom. Like not yelling, \u2018Fire!\u2019 in a crowded theatre. There are times when our personal freedom is outweighed by the well-being of the whole. It\u2019s a tenuous path, so let\u2019s walk it carefully. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Freedom doesn\u2019t mean that \u2018I can do anything I want\u2019. It never has. That\u2019s being a spoiled brat, not being free. Freedom does not relieve us of our social contract to participate in the community in healthy and respectful ways. Not only will I not syphon your gas or key your car, I will not introduce the possibility of disease into your life if there is a chance that I can.<\/p>\n

It is clear that we do not all subscribe to the \u00a0authority of science. Were that so, I wouldn\u2019t be posting this. So let\u2019s figure out what our shared authority is<\/em>. And our shared values, should we have any. If we can agree that the Bible or the Constitution, let me suggest that both documents share at least one purpose: how we are to live together in community.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start here. Not to argue,<\/u> but to find common ground<\/u>. It has to begin with agreeing that we want each other to survive and thrive. I cannot do this alone. I am vaccinated and will wear a mask to protect not only myself but those around me. Please realize that when you go about unmasked and unvaccinated you are telling me you do not share the value of community and, even more important, \u00a0that you are not interested in us finding our way back to reasoned public discourse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been months since I last blogged and you may wonder why. It started (or stopped) when I took a break after the election in November. It was the first time I had taken a deep breath in years and I wanted to breathe for a while. And then breathe some more. So I chose … Continue reading Hello There… I’ve Been Thinking<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,13,8,21,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1619"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1624,"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions\/1624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/connietuttle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}