Caring Kinship

Mother and daughter

Enjoying beautiful plants

Caring in kinship

Inconvenient truth about football

A StarTribune article, The truth behind the death of a Vikings legend, noted how researchers are discovering that the physical impact from games like football is likely causing repetitive brain trauma. Thanks to Wally Hilgenberg's family for donating his brain to researchers in Boston.  This however presents an inconvenient truth about the long-term consequences of football, a popular American sport.

Instead of passively watching football it would be far for people's physical and mental health to choose from the great abundance of non contact sports and just "do it". As for people that want to continue to play the game, it is still a free country!  Just don't expect me to watch your games.

PS  I have great admiration for Wally and Mary Hilgenberg and their son Eric.  For many years they mentored Matt, a young man through Kinship.  Matt came from a troubled home environment in South Minneapolis.  Thanks in large part to the encouragement and support he received from the Hilgenbergs he graduated from law school. Eric Hilgenberg serve as the best man at his wedding.

PSS Minnesota Public Radio had a show on this topic just this morning, Is the NFL concerned by head injuries?

Building Kinship

"There is no us and them, there is only us".  These insightful words come from Father Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest that has dedicated his life to working with gangs in East L.A. .  He spoke yesterday as a part of the Faith and Life lecture series at St. Philip the Deacon Lutheran Church in Plymouth, MN.

Father Boyle shared many touching and humorous stories of relationships fostered between gang members, who once were arch enemies, as they worked side by side with Homeboy Industries.  His primary message was encouraging us to live by a simple mission shared by Jesus "That you may be one". He noted that we enter the Kingdom of God as we form relationships and help others to recognize that they are exactly what God had in mind when God made them.  Working with many who have been disenfranchised, Father Boyle is about creating a community of kinship such that God might recognize it.

An interview with Father Greg Boyle, aka "G Dog" is available from Minnesota Public Radio.