{"id":92,"date":"2009-04-27T22:41:37","date_gmt":"2009-04-27T22:41:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/04\/fear-faith-and-swine-flu.html"},"modified":"2009-04-27T22:41:37","modified_gmt":"2009-04-27T22:41:37","slug":"fear-faith-and-swine-flu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/04\/fear-faith-and-swine-flu.html","title":{"rendered":"Fear, Faith and Swine Flu: Learning to Live with Uncertainty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lots of people are talking about, writing about and tracking the progress of the swine flu. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/swineflu\/\">CDC<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.who.int\/en\/\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\">WHO<\/span><\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dhs.gov\/index.shtm\">Department of Homeland Security<\/a> are providing regular updates. Reporters, bloggers and Twitterers are providing lists of symptoms, prevention measures and, in some cases, rumors and conspiracy theories. <a href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps\/ms?ie=UTF8&amp;hl=en&amp;t=p&amp;msa=0&amp;msid=106484775090296685271.0004681a37b713f6b5950&amp;ll=32.639375,-110.390625&amp;spn=15.738151,25.488281&amp;z=5\">Google Maps<\/a> is even tracking confirmed cases, suspected cases and thought-it-was-a-case-but-tested-and-found-out-it-wasn&#8217;t-a-case cases.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The coming days and weeks will show whether this is much ado about nothing or a serious threat. Either way it makes me wonder how the average individual or family is handling all of this uncertainty. Between the\u00a0ailing world economy; ongoing threats of war and terrorism; earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural disasters; and on-again, off-again public health scares, the post-Y2K years have been an unrelenting string of worrisome and sometimes deadly events. In fact, uncertainty has become the norm rather than the exception.\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>This has long been the case in nations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East where resilient populations have learned to adapt to unimaginable stresses. But this is new to many of us here in America. Sure, things heat up now and then, but we are used to relatively quick cycles of uncertainty followed by prolonged periods of comfort and relative predictablity.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>So how are you learning to cope with all of this change? \u00a0Do you find yourself dealing with fear? Do you suffer from anxiety or depression or do you just prefer not to think about it? How does your faith, spiritual practice or life philosophy impact your response?<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Would love to hear your thoughts.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lots of people are talking about, writing about and tracking the progress of the swine flu. The CDC, WHO and Department of Homeland Security are providing regular updates. Reporters, bloggers and Twitterers are providing lists of symptoms, prevention measures and, in some cases, rumors and conspiracy theories. Google Maps is even tracking confirmed cases, suspected&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spiritual-growth"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Fear, Faith and Swine Flu: Learning to Live with Uncertainty - Flirting with Faith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/04\/fear-faith-and-swine-flu.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fear, Faith and Swine Flu: Learning to Live with Uncertainty - Flirting with Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Lots of people are talking about, writing about and tracking the progress of the swine flu. The CDC, WHO and Department of Homeland Security are providing regular updates. Reporters, bloggers and Twitterers are providing lists of symptoms, prevention measures and, in some cases, rumors and conspiracy theories. Google Maps is even tracking confirmed cases, suspected&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/04\/fear-faith-and-swine-flu.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Flirting with Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-04-27T22:41:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Joan Ball\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Fear, Faith and Swine Flu: Learning to Live with Uncertainty - Flirting with Faith","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/04\/fear-faith-and-swine-flu.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Fear, Faith and Swine Flu: Learning to Live with Uncertainty - Flirting with Faith","og_description":"Lots of people are talking about, writing about and tracking the progress of the swine flu. 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