Friday, June 27, 2014

Quote of the Day (Alan Lightman, on the ‘Unimaginable Power of Nature’)



“The tornadoes that have been devastating parts of the South and Midwest, just weeks after a deadly mudslide in Washington, demonstrate once again the unimaginable power of nature.
After each disaster, we grieve over the human lives lost, the innocent people drowned or crushed without warning as they slept in their beds, worked in their fields or sat at their office desks…. Beyond the grieving and anger is a more subtle emotion. We feel betrayed. We feel betrayed by nature….How could Mother Nature do this to us, her children? Yet despite our strongly felt kinship and oneness with nature, all the evidence suggests that nature doesn’t care one whit about us.” —Alan Lightman, “Our Lonely Home in Nature,” The New York Times, May 3, 2014

The article in which this quote originally appeared came out two months ago. Unfortunately, this week’s news about tornadoes and flooding in the Midwest shows that the piece remains all too current—and it’s likely to continue to be for awhile yet.

(The image accompanying this post shows a tornado near Minco, Oklahoma.)

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