Saying grace

It’s hard to calculate the costs of misinformation, even of something as simple as child’s false boast of knowing about a threat to a school.

Reportedly, something like that caused school to close to students for two days last week, adding to the list of items already causing tensions, long enough even in normal times, which these are not.

Kudos to administrators and police for their professionally cool heads sorting it out.

And to everyone else, including any parent and student, who these days chooses to back away from an urge to jump immediately to criticize or complain.

Dealing with each other with a little grace, as school district Superintendent Paul Turner advocated near the start of the pandemic two years ago, may take more self-awareness and calm than many can summon, but it also saves so much unnecessary anxiety.

As the prevalence of COVID-19 decreases, those anxieties should also recede, eventually. But the world, it seems, keeps finding new sources for it, most recently a war in Ukraine with possible nuclear implications.

Any misinformation about an issue that complicated, unlike fanciful claims of innocents, can have disastrous consequences. But even rumors started by children, as we saw last week, can have serious enough results. So let’s be cautious about what we choose to repeat — to each other in person or online in social media.

And whatever we do, let’s grant each other a little grace, recognizing that we’re walking this path together.

Scott Hunter

editor and publisher