I sat and watched images from Japan this morning for ten minutes or so this morning and was overwhelmed by the images. A wall of what was hard to recognize as water (debris, cars, boats) moving across the landscape… buildings toppling… floating debris on fire. I couldn’t help but feel the magnitude of it — those people killed, uprooted, traumatized. Lives and livelihood taken in one slip of a tectonic plate. And slowly I began to recognize the voices dubbed over the carnage… a woman, the anchor, telling us that there were reports that this should cause the price of oil to drop. Another station with images of a watery apocalypse, and another confident voice talking about how this might ease the prices at the gas pump.
Is this what it has come to? That our gluttony has finally conquered our compassion? That a tragic day for thousands, millions of people, has come to measured in words like economy and barrels? Really? This tragedy in Japan registers for us only in dollars, not tears?
What the Owl Knows 