My Turn to Comment

Understandably, Rev. Carol changed her Sunday sermon from the planned topic to talk about Saturday's Shuttle Columbia incident. She mentioned how we tend to be a "fix it," take-action type of society, which explains CNN's non-stop, ad nauseum coverage of the latest data and speculation. Contrary to society, she said, it is okay to take time to grieve loss.

Why is it so easy to recall "where you were" when some great tragedy struck? Rev. Carol listed other events — the assassination of JFK (before my time), the Challenger incident (I was in 9th grade), the events of September 11, 2001 (at work) — where many folks can name what they were doing when they heard "the news." These are somehow the defining moments of modern life.

Global-level, positive moments worth remembering are harder to list. I suppose for my parents' generation, it was the Moon landing. For their parents, perhaps the end of World War II — although that was dependent on ending an extended tragedy. For my own generation, though, I can't come up with an instance. (That we came through Millennium Eve without anything blowing up, and without the predicted devastation of the Y2K Bug, doesn't seem quite positive enough.)

Should we recall the day the World Trade Center opened? The day the shuttle first successfully launched? Probably not, because these events were the denouement of lengthy construction projects. It's only when something major happens to disrupt what we have come to accept as the routine, that we are shocked and dismayed enough to mark the moment as a historical milestone.

Instead, I would propose that moments of joy happen far more often in relationships than on a world-changing scale: The moment of proposing marriage to the one you hope to be your spouse; Learning of an impending birth. These aren't the events that make headlines, but instead serve to counter-balance the ever more depressing international news.

The Biblical accounts of Jesus' life even go this route. His birth, although apparently widely advertised, seems to have been attended by few. He made his post-Resurrection appearances to a select group of close associates. His humiliation and Crucifixion, however, were witnessed by large parts of the Jerusalem populace.

In no way do I want to diminish the value of the lives lost — and yet, I believe that any loss of life is ultimately tragic. Why, I wonder, is this loss of lives more of a global tragedy than, say, the 1,800 people killed in a sinking ferry? Granted, trips on and off the planet are still reserved for a select few and therefore high profile, but consider whether the heightened sense of disaster stems from the amount of hope we've been conditioned to place in the promises of space exploration.

For 40 years, we've been told how all of our problems will be solved in space. Better materials development. New medicines. Improved agriculture. And the granddaddy of them all: Peace. The mythology of Star Trek and Science pervades our belief — put all our hope and trust in space, and we will finally achieve world peace, all of the planet united in exploration and non-destructive cultural improvement. In a worst-case scenario, space holds the hope for a new place to live once we've proven ourselves inept and inadequate as stewards of the planet we call home. This type of belief is even more encouraging as we inch toward global war.

It would seem that as a species, we are explorers — always trying to push the edge of our awareness, to learn more. Every question we have must have a scientific answer available. The men and women who travel to space are continuing that search by proxy for the rest of us, as we stay behind with the nagging fear that everything on the planet has been discovered, and that pervasive hope that since the answers weren't here, our future clearly lies in the stars. But it is moments such as this, or earthquakes, or hurricanes, that serve to remind us once again that we do not have the answers, nor the power to control or fix everything that comes our way — even if we do have that "fix it" mentality.

Given all of this, it would seem the greatest chance we have to improve the human condition is one-off. By showing compassion and respect to the individuals we encounter, we can do more to counteract the grand disasters of the day than by all of the "find it and fix it" in the world.