It must be mandatory that every blogger weighs on Katrina, here goes …

Life is Suffering

I’ve been thinking about this simple phrase for months. Everywhere around me I see suffering; seeing it at the scale of Katrina is rending. I can’t begin to wrap my head around the loss and tragedy.

People Are Worse Than I Think

Its amazing to me how quickly people people beat a path to their soapbox explaining how their way of looking at the world would have made things better — more government, more bush, less bush, less government, more jesus, less jesus, more green, more action, less talk, more compassion, more troops, more guns, less guns, less carbon dioxide, more justice. I have no patience for anyone who wants to extract political profit from human tragedy. In addition to the oppourtunistic self serving hordes, there appears to be an unlimited supply of morons.

People Are Better Than I Think

I love the hero stories of the rescue workers and the people pouring themself out for people they never knew. Anyone who puts themselves in harm’s way for another has my respect and gratitude.

A Closing Thought

I’ve read some eloquent thoughts in the last few days. I’ll share one of my personal favorites.

Parting by Emily Dickinson.
My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If immortality unveil
A third event to me
So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

For the last few weeks I’ve been working my way through “The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson.” I had read bits and pieces of her work before but had never tried to work through the entire canon. The more I read, the more amazed I am at both her ability to capture emotions and how thoroughly modern her writing is. (No, I don’t care if you can sing them all to the yellow rose of Texas.)

[Poem Courtesy of the Writers Almanac]