8 June 2020
Costa Rica is about the size of West Virginia and has a population of five million. The country has a sophisticated universal public health system that in the US would be called single payer. The “Caja,” as it is popularly called, has done a very good job so far with Covid 19. Confirmed cases to date are a little over 1300. Only ten deaths, and just four patients currently in intensive care. Even so, confirmed cases are spiking, with a record 55 confirmed yesterday. The lockdown to achieve these low infection rates is similar to that in most countries: social distancing, and outright closing of human gathering places, from restaurants to concerts.
Are You a Car Driving Criminal?
In this country, there’s also a very Costa Rican lockdown addition: limiting vehicle circulation based on the last digit of license plate numbers. The start of restrictions coincided with Catholic Holy Week leading up to Easter. An amazing 80% of cars were barred from public roads over that five day mandatory vacation.
Now, 20% of vehicles are barred Monday through Friday, based on two of ten possible last digits, each day. On weekends, it’s 50%: last number even barred on Saturday, odd numbered on Sunday. Get caught, and it’s a sure fine and possibly having your license plates impounded. The latter penalty guarantees a bureaucratic hassle when you least want one. Lots of waiting in line – when those lines crawl slower than ever due to social distancing – to get your plates back so you can use your car again
Tourists Needed
Costa Rican health authorities have won much respect by being proactive and keeping ahead of the contagion curve so far. But the economy has been devastated. Tourism, which has shut down completely, was the country’s biggest foreign exchange earner.
When you are finally able to travel and need a vacation, keep this little gem of a country in mind. The rivers, beaches, mountains and wildlife are still here, beautiful as ever.
Author’s Preface to all three Spirit War Books
Jesus of Nazareth was fully, 100% human.
But the fact of his humanity is often overshadowed by the other most basic Christian belief about Him. Through this man god became one of us, who died, but rose again. If we can get beyond this paradox of faith and focus on the Son of Man as a flesh-and-blood, body-and-soul human being, Jesus’s humanity becomes intriguing.
All sorts of questions about Christ’s life and choices fairly leap out from the gospels:
- What were Jesus’s personal loves, and how were these loves resolved? Especially with his family and the women in his life?
- Where did this greatest of all teachers obtain the practical, down-to-earth knowledge of a workaday world – and of the loves and loathings, hopes and fears of ordinary people – that he so brilliantly works into his parables and lessons?
- Jesus came to bridge the separation between God and all men and women, but also to defeat Satan and Death. What was the balance and interaction between the Messiah’s parallel missions?
- How accurate were the Old Testament predictions to which Jesus referred so often, and how well did he fulfill them?
- How could God want his only Son to die the cruelest death that men of that time could inflict? And what drove the Lamb of God to lay down his power over nature and accept that death?
The Spirit War presents proposals of possible answers to the preceding questions.
The Trilogy provides scripture footnotes along the way, for those interested in how the biblical writings are woven into the story. But this is neither a scholarly nor a formally religious work. The Spirit War can be read and enjoyed without an accompanying bible.
In writing on such a sacred subject in a modern way, this author assumes a double burden of respect.
The first and ultimate respect must be to the real characters in the story. Jesus as the Word, Gabriel and Michael, who existed before time. Jesus the man, the Blessed Mother, Mary Magdalene, Joseph, John the Baptizer, Longinus and Peter, who all walked our Earth. This trilogy was written with the possibility in this author’s mind, of coming face to face some day with each of these special persons.
The second burden of respect is to the tale itself. This most magnificent of all love stories and mysteries deserves to be a great read. My goal in writing The Spirit War is to bring, to believers and non-believers alike, a work in which the telling is worthy of the subject matter.
Fernando Quirós
