An amazing story which hits close to home; the planet is angry.  Between earthquakes, cyclones, volcanoes, tornadoes, mudslides, wildfires, floods, drought, food shortages, and war – May of 2008 may very well be remembered as one of the deadliest ever.  It’s often hard to put a face on death of this kind of scale – we hear numbers of 100,000 dead in Burma, 35,000 dead in China, but that kind of death toll is almost inconceivable to comprehend.

Most of us know what it feels like when we lose one person we care about, but very few, if any of us, have any frame of context or reference to grasp death on that kind of catastrophic scale – which is why sometimes it takes a single human story to come out of such a tragedy to help put things into perspective, and to put a face on such massive human loss.

This article here in the New York Times does just that.

It’s a story about love in the face of death.  A Chinese couple found themselves buried under tons of rubble locked in each other’s arms.  They were alive but pinned together with their arms wrapped around each other, with no way to escape – but they had time – time to say everything you would want to say to the person you loved if you thought you were going to die.

What struck me was their ages – very close to me and my husband’s age – and they also had a 14 year old daughter, also very close to my own son’s age.

I started thinking about how I might confront something like that.  I don’t think we ever can plan for such a calamity, and certainly none of the human beings who have been killed in these natural disasters recently could either – but it reminds us of the fragility and beauty of life, and just how quickly and unexpectedly it can end.  Maybe that’s a lesson to all of us – to cherish those you love and who love you, and to remember to tell them the things you need to tell them now, while you have the chance.

Amazingly the couple lived.  They were discovered by rescue workers 28 hours after the earthquake – but the death toll worldwide of all the people lost on this angry planet leaves my heart heavy.  The loss of human life is simply staggering – and also knowing that the largest of these disasters occurred in Asia is more distressing for me.  I feel a kinship in a way for those suffering in Burma and China – and it angers me that the world seems powerless to do anything about the criminal military junta in Burma which has kept immediate aid and aid workers out of the country.  The United States just invades countries it wants to for its own needs, but it throws its arms up in the air when it comes to a tiny Buddhist country bordering China, and the suffering there is truly atrocious – and has been long before it was hit by a cyclone.

China begins three days of mourning for the estimated 35,000 dead there today – and yet there is still no resolution about how the world intends to deal with getting aid those dying in Burma.

So today is somewhat a day of somber reflection for me, tho not completely on a downer – just a simple observation that the world is bigger than all of us, and a reminder that we’re all children of the same mother.

Enjoy your Monday