Sunday, January 25, 2026
Sunday Reflection: I'm ok. Our country is not.
Yesterday I was getting ready to go to the gym and listening to reports about the killing of Alex Pretti, a VA nurse, by federal agents who held him down and then shot him several times.
It made me mad, something that had been building in me-- a righteous anger at what is being done to my city. I decided to go down to the scene of the killing and observe what was happening.
The federal agents had blocked off an intersection at 26th and Nicollet and were massed at the far end. At the other end protesters were chanting and waving signs behind police tape. I walked past several police officers to get there on the sidewalk and wasn't stopped-- I did not cross a perimeter or anything, and there was no apparent effort to clear that area.
About a minute after I arrived and as I stood towards the back of that crowd, a canister of tear gas/chemical irritant landed very close to me and a toxic cloud enveloped me and those around me. Everyone began to run to get out from the cloud. I could barely see and couldn't breathe, which made it hard to run. It was like drowning. I finally turned a corner and fell into a snowbank to recover as people ran past.
It was a peaceful protest, taking place on the other side of the line that the authorities had established. The ICE officers were dozens of yards away, on the other side of the intersection.
The gas was terrifying, but I suffered nothing compared to many others.
But... how is this not a spiritual crisis, not about the way we treat our neighbors?
And the original, with lyrics:
