Copy Desk Daily, Sept. 1, 2020

Recommended for you today, from the NCR/GSR/EarthBeat copy desk:

Today starts the Season of Creation. What are people doing? EarthBeat has a detailed explaination of its history and what's planned for 2020 here.

In July alone, Witness at the Border identified 29 ICE flights to Mexico, 18 to Honduras, 13 to Guatemala, and nine to El Salvador, along with other countries. The number of flights deporting immigrants to Latin America and the Caribbean dipped in late spring, but July's number was just 10% lower than it was in March, when lockdowns first took effect in the U.S. How is this spreading COVID-19?

Ian Vorster: "Three months into my rehabilitation, I told my wife that I would walk the John Muir Trail a year after my stroke, to mark my 50th birthday. I found a kindred spirit in John Muir, who believed that exposure to the natural world, especially mountains, is transformative for humans, no matter what their faith." Read his commentary here.

Global Sisters Report continues its interviews with sisters and former sisters who marched in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. Today, learn from Therese Stawowy, who was a Sister of Loretto and someone who knew what it was like to get hate mail long before social media made internet trolling so convenient. Asked what role sisters today should play into the Black Lives Matter movement and contemporary protests, she said, "Religious women are going to be and are already leaders in our church: unafraid to speak, knowing there's a cause and going forward anyway." Read more here.

This week's Soul Seeing Column: The words of Thomas Merton have helped Dani Clark come to terms with certain realities. She has been writing to Ivan, who is on death row, since 2004. What can you give someone who is locked in a cage, waiting for an execution date? Here's what she's learned.

The God at the Democratic National Convention was far different than the God at the Republican conventiom. Commentary by Melinda Henneberger.

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