Minister's Post, Fri Nov 13

My dear companions on our faith path,

These are our times.

The coronavirus is not slowing down. In fact, it's dramatically ramping up. The last week (Nov 5-11), the USA saw an average of 129,475 new cases a day.

Sixteen days ago, on Oct 26, the 7-day average of cases per day broke the US record of 70,000, set back in July. Every day since then has set a new record.

Just five weeks ago (Oct 1-7), the average number of new cases per day for the week was under 46,000. If the growth rate of the last five weeks continues for one more week, then next week I'll be writing that we're seeing a 7-day average of about 160,000 new cases a day. The burden on hospitals is especially heavy in mid-west and western US.

As the cases-per-day increased, at first, the deaths from Covid-19 were staying flat. But this week, the death rate climbed to over 1,000 a day (average for the week Nov 5-11) -- over 20% more than the week before. Because we're better able to treat the disease -- and it's affecting more younger folks with fewer co-morbidities -- the deaths from Covid-19 are still below the early-August peak (7-day average of 1,181 deaths per day), and well below the mid-April peak (7-day average of 2,241 deaths per day).

But with this many new cases, the number of deaths is going to be climbing. Let's be as safe as we can!

WORLD: While the rate of new Covid cases is also increasing worldwide, it is doing so at a somewhat slower pace. In the last five weeks, while new Covid cases in the US this week (Nov 5-11) are 2.8 times the new cases 5 weeks ago (Oct 1-7), new Covid cases worldwide this week are 1.9 times the new cases 5 weeks ago. Worldwide deaths from Covid this week are 1.6 times what they were 5 weeks ago -- about the same rate of increase as in the US.

NEW YORK: New Covid cases in New York this week averaged 3,601 a day. That's 2.5 times the number of new cases 5 weeks ago -- not quite the growth rate of the US as a whole. The New York 7-day average of deaths per day, which was in the single-digits in September, and stayed less than 20 through October, rose to 23 as of November 11.

Covid-19 New Cases & Deaths	Avg Cases per Day: World	Avg Cases per Day: USA	Avg Cases per Day: New York	Avg Deaths per Day: World	Avg Deaths per Day: USA	Avg Deaths per Day: New York
Sep 10-16	287,909	39,574	815	5,315	856	7
Sep 17-23	291,068	41,657	861	5,040	755	5
Sep 24-30	294,210	42,932	1,031	4,970	733	9
Oct 1-7	307,930	45,824	1,447	5,147	722	15
Oct 8-14	338,410	53,310	1,453	5,207	726	10
Oct 15-21	391,816	62,153	1,588	5,667	795	14
Oct 22-28	466,251	75,632	1,805	6,119	818	14
Oct 29-Nov 4	514,950	92,856	2,207	7,142	894	17
Nov 5-11	572,672	129,475	3,601	8,303	1,080	23

 Yours,

Meredith

Practice of the Week

This week in our series of practices that might or might not be your thing: Art.
See: HERE
These "Might Be Your Thing" practices aren’t for everyone – but might be just the thing for you. These will be activities that you might be doing anyway, but maybe not as a spiritual practice – or one of them might be an activity you’d like to take up.

Any activity can be a spiritual practice if you:

1. establish a foundation of spiritual orientation through the three core daily practices: read spiritual texts, journal (which might take the form of Morning Pages, or incorporate an Idea Journal), and quiet-still time;
2. engage the activity with mindfulness;
3. engage in the activity with intention of cultivating spiritual development;
4. occasionally engage the activity with a group that gathers expressly to do the activity in a way that cultivates spirituality, with group members sharing spiritual reflections before, during, or after doing the activity together.