Tonight, I lack creativity, so it is going to just be a journal entry here.

Let me first off say that, while I am pretty excited and interested in the life of this Spanish guy, and while the book is not badly written or dry or anything like that, I cannot seem to read more than four to six pages in it in an hour and a half session. And being 250 pages long, with about 50 pages now completed, I have another 30 or so sessions to power through this thing. It doesn’t help that I am trying to type notes on every paragraph I read while also fighting to hold the hardback open so I can recap each blurb as I read it. I hope something comes out of this.

But what I hope comes out of it is a screenplay. I’ve always wanted to write one, so I think it is time, I guess. I have no kids to yell at, so why not.

In other news, as the last official visitors on Obama’s White House calendar, the Chicago Cubs got to go to the White House to share a moment with the president.

I shared a photo of the team with president on Facebook, and naturally, someone I thought I knew fairly well- although a friend from my past a while ago, but a Chicagoan and a Cubs fan, politicized. All because the Cubs were standing in a photo with a president she didn’t like.

I’m a Cubs fan. And an America fan. And a tradition fan. And a fan of sports team receiving a presidential reception as an honor- because it is an honor. The honor is not who invited you to visit the White House. The honor lies in the office of president taking time to recognize an organization that had significant impact on the country on a playing field. The honor comes from an institution that represents leadership and freedom and democracy at work in this nation. And the honor comes from an office that represents all Americans, whether the man in the seat is one’s favorite or not.

And I have to say, in a year- or an era of dour days here and abroad, the 2016 Cubs were a phenomenal feel good story that anyone could appreciate. The Lovable Losers overturned 108 years of futility, in extra innings of a World Series game 7. The White House visit was for the Cubs, by America, about the Cubs.

For goodness sakes, can we just celebrate something that is thoroughly American without tainting it with biases ad prejudices?

Similarly, today was also Martin Luther King’s Day here in the States, and on this day, it is common that people find and slap King quotes on Facebook. No doubt, King’s quotes are good, but in context, these quotes are offered somewhat generically, omitting the fact that King was a Christian minister and the fuel for his thoughts was his faith.

There is a white granite memorial in Washington, DC, that features a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr., with quotes from various works attributed to him engraved upon it. These quotes come from books, and Letters. And sermons.

The man solemnized in that memorial was a preacher whose love of God drove his thoughts, and whose love of his fellow man drove his actions.

King was a man whose faith necessitated his political actions, not a man whose political actions steered his faith.

“All men, created alike in the image of God, are inseparably bound together,” King wrote in 1956. “This is at the very heart of the Christian gospel.”

For him, love, the answer to racial and social ills, was not party or platform dependent, but a command and gift of the Creator, who made every human heart to live by and for it. King wasn’t a perfect person, like any of us, but he kept his heart connected to the Word of God, and his actions connected to his heart.

Thank you, Dr. King, for having had the courage to live out the convictions of your love-driven, Gospel-guided heart.

Well, that’s what I am thinking tonight.