Happy New Year!!! After a rather long two-week hiatus from blogging, I’m back. I must confess that the total break was good—I felt like I’d been getting too long-winded, too stale there toward the end with the posts. Frankly, I was usually too busy to blog during my vacation. But I will maintain a Sphinx-like silence on my holiday activities, except to say that I kept the fine Rice tradition of a rather dull New Year’s Eve. I did see "Chronicles of Narnia" that night, though. Fun movie.

I’m having a rather Job-ish day today, to tell you the truth… I procured a nasty little cold while I was home, a cold of the ilk that should have kept me in bed today. I didn’t get home from Seattle until about 12:30 am, and then once I managed to overcome the coughing and congestion, I fell asleep at about 2. But since I’ve been gone now for more than two weeks, I felt bad calling in sick on my first day back. So here I am, armed with my Crestwood IGA wonder drug cold medication and some herbal tea. I’m hoping Mary Elva doesn’t catch me and send me home. I also have a cold sore on the back of my tongue that makes eating a bit painful. Ah, woe is me.

I think I needed a break from the world this vacation. I didn’t spend nearly as much time while I was home on e-mail, didn’t watch TV much, didn’t talk on my cell phone a whole lot (perhaps because I got to see most of the people I usually talk to on the phone). It was actually a very good restful space, because I had been a bit overwhelmed up to that point.

Of course, just because I took a break from the world doesn’t mean that the world went anywhere. No, it was waiting for me yesterday, in all its obnoxious glory, in the form of CNN. Regardless of where I went in the airport, all I heard were TV screens blaring about the 13 trapped miners in West Virginia. Wolf Blitzer reported on it during his show “Situation Room,” followed immediately by Paula Zahn on her show. I think Anderson Cooper 360 was due to highlight it next. If I’d been glued to my screen, I would have learned all about the mining industry in the United States while hearing back from several viewers about why they would never work in such a job. Really, this news media oversaturation just depresses me—that’s why I avoid watching.

Prompted by such nonstop coverage, during my parting breakfast conversation yesterday morning with David and my Japanese friend Maho I asked, “Do you think the world is scarier today than it used to be?” A lady walking through the hotel lobby who overheard my philosophical musing immediately replied, “Oh, yes. You used to be able to travel anywhere and not be worried at all.”

But I disagree, really, because the question depends on your point of view. For instance, I turned to Maho and asked if her grandparents had lived through World War II. She replied that yes, they had. And I wondered how frightening the world had seemed to them, especially following the dawn of the nuclear age on their soil. How terrifying is it for others to live under totalitarian regimes? How scary to be in the middle of ethnic cleansing conflicts?

Contrary to most doomsayers, I don’t think our fallen creation is that much worse than it ever was. Unlike previous eras of history, though, we have a much broader perspective than our own city or even our own nation. We get a full picture of how crazy things really are, how much all humans resemble one another in their tendency to fail. CNN’s 24-hour coverage is both a blessing and a curse.

Perhaps this information oversaturation can actually provide us with some opportunities in 2006—to actually see our common human condition, and to come together as one to begin something else anew. May 2006 be the year of new things, one in which God's realm manifests itself through peace and healing.

“I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.” --Isaiah 43:19

Kelsey