Ann Althouse reflects on the woman at a mall who fell into a fountain while texting and later found herself famous on YouTube:

We need to learn how to live in the world as it is. When we’re in public, we have a new dimension of visibility because of digital cameras and the internet. I’ve been thinking about the effect this is having on politics. Politicians have to watch every single thing they say. That’s difficult.

You have to be careful what graphics you put on your maps now too.  Anything can become a liability.

I was at Morning Fresh today, reading my Kindle, and the Woman In the Fountain was on CNN, complaining about what happened to her.  Strangely, I felt little sympathy.  I was struck by the inability to laugh at yourself.  What if she had said, “I am glad that so many people are finding joy and amusement at my ineptness.  We all need more laughter in life.  I’ll be more careful next time.”

CNN showed that little video snip a dozen times.  I was reminded, too, of the Woman At the Well, who fortunately did not fall in.

Three young boys from Morenci have been missing since Thanksgiving and are feared dead.  Or in the language of the local police chief, “The information we have does not indicate that it’s going to be a positive outcome.”  The boys’ names are Andrew, Alexander and Tanner.  Searchers have been looking for them in areas of Ohio and Michigan.  Their father, apparently mentally ill, is in custody.

Their pastor is responding with hospitality and faith:

The Rev. Donna Galloway of Morenci United Methodist Church, the church the Skelton family attends, invited community members to come to the church if they are seeking a quiet place away from the commotion and the media spotlight.

Galloway, who is also the Morenci Fire Department’s chaplain, asked people to pray for the boys, their family, and the law enforcement officials and volunteers who are searching for them.

Galloway said the missing boys are “very special.”

“Sunday, standing and looking out and not seeing them sitting in their little shirts and ties was real difficult,” she said. “But we are a community of faith and we have belief in God and we know that they are being watched over.”

Danny Heitman, a Louisiana journalist, says now that the election is over the best thing for politicians to do is nothing, so they can rest for a while.

If our political culture has come to embrace the ethic of the factory – a seven-day operation, without pause for reflection – then we shouldn’t be surprised that the language of our political discourse so often sounds vaguely robotic, as if it’s being nudged through an assembly line for public consumption…

Perhaps the better model for enlightened leadership isn’t the factory but the farm, an enterprise grounded in the assumption that there is value in being fallow, that good things can come from brief periods of inactivity.

I like his pun on the word grounded, since farms grow crops out of the ground.  He would like political leaders to become more grounded by cultivating time for rest and reflection after a frenetic election season.  He quotes Wayne Mueller’s book on Sabbath, which we used in a Lenten study a few years ago.

The analogy to farming breaks down somewhere since farmers are still active even when their land is inactive.  But there is still wisdom in the point itself:  in small doses, rest and inactivity make for a healthy life.

From National Public Radio on The Role of Religion in the Voting Booth:

[I]n some respects, America is quite unusual. It’s partly because of the separation of church and state that goes back to the Constitution. But Americans are, compared to other peoples in the world… way very, very religious. We are – the average American, in terms of attendance at church or saying that important – religion is important to them, and so on, the average American is as religious – a little [more] religious than the average Iranian. So Americans are very religious.

We are also very diverse in our religions. Not only between Catholics and Protestants, which was historically the big difference, but now increasingly other religions, too. In most parts of the world, places that are deeply devout and diverse religiously have a high index of mayhem - that is, there’s a – taken in high doses, religion is generally toxic to civic health.

But America, despite what we’ve been saying about the polarization – and that’s, of course, true over the last generation – Americans actually, including religion – religious people of all sorts, are surprisingly tolerant of other people. And so – and certainly way more tolerant than you’d expect given the fact that we’re very religious and diverse in our religiosity.

This excerpt occurs at about 22:30 in the audio.  It’s a 30 minute discussion.  I found two things interesting:  1) the tension between individual conscience and the social teachings of religious organizations; and 2) the people whose religious beliefs lead them toward being a hybrid in their social views and voting habits.