I don't feel like doing anything but being still on the couch, but my friend Alina invites me out to Mari Vanna for the old Russian New Year.  "Lots of beautiful Russian ladies, you will feel better," she texts.  Okay, I take a shower, I get on the bus.


And today, that feeling again...  religious, I guess, you'd call it.

The Russian women are kind to me.  You are a kind man, one tells me, as I dance with her friend, who is older, my age.  You should pass on your genes into this world.  My new friend drops me off at the foot of Key Bridge.  She has to get home to Herndon.  I thought I'd feel like walking, but I get an Uber, it's too cold for a thirty minute walk at this hour.

My book will never be picked up easily by happy people, any more than All Quiet On The Western Front.  People who like happiness will pursue their happiness, without need for anything as depressing.  It is your own responsibility to find your own happiness, so why indulge in tales of failure at the endeavor?

Who needs Jesus to come telling us of our duty toward those who are suffering, as we too, in reality, are suffering...  Messiah to the truth of God's Reign over the earth, which we fail to heed at our own peril.

"The breaking into human history of the reign of God is not happening in some far-off time, or in some distant land, but right now, and Jesus is saying, not in some distant land, but before your eyes..."

James Martin, Jesus, a Pilgrimage.