Blue Boat

NASA Photo

On Wednesday evening, March 9, I celebrated the Ash Wednesday liturgy at Grace Church, Long Rapids, for a congregation of nine souls.  This service, especially the litany, is an annual reminder of our mortality, our spiritual shortcomings, and our continual need to seek peace with God and with one another.

The 8.9 earthquake in Japan on Friday afternoon, March 11 — one of the most severe tremors ever recorded — has underscored that message.  The quake itself, the tsunami which rushed inland minutes later, and now a partial meltdown in one or more of four nearby nuclear reactors, has pushed our divisions and disagreements to the side, at least for a few days.  Seventy years ago the Japanese were our mortal enemies.  Today we mourn the loss of potentially thousands of friends, and we pray for those who have survived.  In the end, we are one world, one people, all created in God's image, all passengers and crew on a little blue boat sailing across the heavens. •••