On the rescue of the Miners in Chile:
It was a triumph of the human spirit: that those miners subsisted with so little light and nourishment, and yet with so much hope and confidence.
It was no surprise that Omar Reygadas knelt and clutched the Bible.
We rejoice in their return to the open where they can breathe and live like the rest of us, and the relief they brought to their families and friends.
We are grateful to these miners, as we should be to the thousands of others like them all over the world who delve every day into the bowels of the earth to scrape minerals and materials that run our civilization.
We are grateful equally to the many people whose relentless dedication to save those miners ultimately succeeded, and to the latest technology that made the rescue possible. The entire episode revealed the very dark and the very bright sides of industrial civilization.
It also showed how, in the face of a tragedy like this, all normal human beings are linked together through the intangible bond of our humanity: so different from the madness that willfully plans and perpetrates mass murder: which too is a human potential
This was an unusual near-disaster that cost more anxiety, more faltering hope, and more ardent prayers than any other in recent memory.
We wish the miners the very best in their recovery from this horrendous suspense and suffering.
October 13, 2010
Spurts of Thought 