The devastation in Japan has started to seep into all my thoughts.
I will continue to write about our trip to Turkey and to post the pictures, but not today. For me, right now, it feels like bad timing.
I know have no control over natural forces. I know that my having a happy life vs some Japanese person having a life suddenly torn from all familiar moorings and family and friends is not my doing. But for what it's worth, I am thinking about all those people who survived, and looking at the pictures (tho not so much tv as that is suddenly too much) and I am empathizing with them..
To imagine the force of a 9.1 earthquake, followed by a 30 foot wall of water tsunami that in some places went 10 kilometers (6 miles) inland, laying waste to everything in that wall of water's path is incredible.
Contemplating the fact that Japan appears to have moved 2.4 meters (8 feet) and the earth has shifted on its axis, is like thinking that a science fiction story is really true.
Anyway, my thoughts tonight are with Japan, the people, and the pets and domestic and wild animals affected- both the dead and those that survived.
I'm thinking of the pieces of history gone forever, and the potential meltdown situations with their nuclear reactors (someday becoming future history).
And I am thinking about what I would do, how I would feel if I were in their place.
We're really such a fragile web of life on this planet. And there appears to be no guarantees. I'll end this post with an excerpt from a sermon that has been riding with me all day:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
Meditation XVI- John Donne
You sum up what I and many others have been feeling and saying this week and the quotation from John Donne is pefect. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteYes you do say what so many of us are feeling and the quotation is indeed perfect.
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