[November 2005 journal entry]
The death count has passed 86,000 from the recent earthquake that struck the mountainous region separating India and Pakistan. The difficult terrain insures thousands more will perish, especially with winter approaching. And then there are the severely injured. Such events are analogous to the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. Yet I do not detect existential, theological, or philosophical trauma being confessed/expressed as was the case among theologians and philosophers after the Lisbon earthquake. Why not? To look closely, widely, and without discrimination at ‘life under the sun’ is to be unavoidably on the edge of despair.