Tilly Evan Jones

Like many people, I awoke the other morning to view and hear about shocking and horrific events in Japan.  I watched, horrified, at the loss of life. Images passed across my television screen and my internet servers that were unbelievable, hard to understand, and painful to watch.

I know that this sort of event, on some scale, with some type of disaster, will play out anywhere.  We have tornado’s, hurricanes, earthquakes, erupting volcano’s, floods, man-made disasters, hate, and war all happening every day on our planet.  We hear about them instantly, and, like the pictures we see of war, sometimes we grow immune to the pain we see.  These images are distant and replaced by others within a few days.  We have a global withdrawal from anguish in the midst of disaster.

It is my hope that I do not let go of the pain, that what I witness, I witness with compassion.  It seems important to always recognize suffering, and see it, and take the pain.  It is important that I never learn to overlook.

At the same time, equal importance needs to go to finding joy in the world around me.  I help what I can, but I also understand the we all must continue to hope, and find prosperity and love and belief in our challenge to live in happiness.  By doing so, by continuing hope, I think, for myself anyway, I can honor more effectively; pain.

We must reach out with healing thoughts, open ourselves to take some of the pain and help to convert our worlds suffering to survival.

We have not heard the end of disasters around the world; we will have more and more as the changes taking place in our existence magnify and move.  As a group, let us please keep prayers in our hearts, on our lips.  And continue to love, continue to believe.