Lord, have mercy

I grew up dreading nuclear war. I don't remember bomb drills in school, but I remember when magazines regularly ran articles about how to stock your backyard fallout shelter. I remember the black and yellow signs adorning public buildings, telling us we could take refuge there, and I remember the boxes of non-perishable food and barrels of water that you could sometimes glimpse passing through such areas. I remember the Cuban missile crisis, and my mother sitting on the edge of the couch, watching the news reports back in the days before 24-7 coverage, when a news bulletin interrupting a regular broadcast means something really momentous was happening. I remember Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and anti-nuke protests.

But I never imagined it being like this: a holocaust brought on by an event already tragic in its own right, a melt-down of such vast proportions, one that seems to spiral ever towards apocalypse. The NY Times says it's not yet as bad as Chernobyl; maybe it's just the non-stop pictures and commentary and the story of the last 50 workers left trying to prevent further catastrophe that make it seem much worse. Or maybe it's that I'm older and catastrophe seems more real to me, finitude more certain.

Nothing comes without cost; the people of Japan have more than once paid a tragic price for whatever good has come out of humans' ability to spilt the atom.

Lord have mercy on the people of Japan. Lord have mercy on us all.