Tsunami thoughts

Moon Phase: Last Quarter
Weather: Cloudy and 58F (warm for January!)

I've been thinking about this tsunami ever since I heard about it last week. The death toll has climbed to over 150,000 now, and I bet it'll top 200,000 very soon. Things like this really make me wonder how anyone can believe in God—I know it's an old atheist argument, but it's still valid: what sort of benevolent god would allow such a thing—and more importantly, cause it? I've never heard a satisfactory answer. All they ever say is "He works in mysterious ways", which is just evasive bullshit. People like to comfort themselves by thinking that there's some rhyme and reason for all the suffering in the world because they find that easier than admitting that there may be no reason at all. But personally, I would prefer there not to be a reason—aside from the fact that logically there can't be, I would much rather think that suffering happens for no reason, just as a result of a chaotic and constantly shifting universe, than because someone chose to cause suffering, chose to create a world where evil exists when it doesn't need to. And it wouldn't need to, if God were omnipotent—He could create any sort of world he wanted, could create humans who can appreciate good without needing to experience evil.

Humans have always invented stories to explain the things we couldn't understand, blaming the gods, whether they were callous like the Greek gods or caring like the Judeo-Christian one. But they're just stories. This tsunami didn't happen because God willed it that way; it happened for purely physical reasons and without regard for the lives it would destroy. And it might seem as callous as the Greek gods, but nature isn't unfeeling or indifferent, it just doesn't take sides. Why expect nature to choose organic life over the inevitable shifting of tectonic plates?

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't mourn. That many lives extinguished in so short a time—I like humans, and it makes me sad to think of all those people gone, all their loved ones suffering that loss. And the other life forms, too—how many plants torn out of the ground and washed away, or drowned in salt water? One nice thing, though, is that the animals mostly escaped: they felt the water coming before the humans did, and left for higher ground.

First digital photos

Moon Phase: Waning Gibbous
Weather: Blue sky and surprisingly warm

I had a good xmas. I of course celebrate the winter solstice and not Christmas, but my atheist/agnostic parents like to celebrate xmas on the 25th, even if they don't particularly care about Jesus' supposed birth. Quakers traditionally didn't celebrate Christmas, because they said every day is sacred and celebration is unnecessary, but nowadays most Quakers do Christmas, at least in our branch. So my family does the tree and the decorations and the presents and the visits with relatives. We have traditions that I still love—going out to dinner xmas eve, then coming home and lighting candles and reading A Visit From Saint Nick and The Polar Express, drinking egg nog (well, soy nog in my case—I'm no longer vegan but I just can't stand milk anymore) and eating xmas cookies. On xmas we get up and open presents: I got a digital camera, an Olympus C765, with 10x zoom, 4 megapixels, and pretty good manual controls.

So, onto the pictures, the first ones I've taken with my new camera:

A couple of pictures I took from the car on the way to my cousins' in Virginia on xmas. I really like the way the telephone wires are angled, which was just pure luck. I decided to turn that one black and white because it has such great lines.

Monday morning I woke up early so we could leave for my cousins in Philly, and when I looked out the window I saw that beautiful golden light spilling over the buildings onto the trees, that specific shade and intensity of sunlight that you only see in early morning. So of course I had to take some pictures of it. I never see sunrises; I'm never up early enough. But when I do they just blow me away. Visually, the light of a sunrise is probably exactly like that of a sunset, only backwards, but it feels very different, because I'm still just waking up.

A couple of pictures I took at MLK park in White Oak, where there's a lovely little pond. This was around 3 in the afternoon, but you can see the sun is already setting, turning the sky yellow. Canada geese (no, not "Canadian", Canada) are one of those bizarre native species that have capitalized on the suburbanization of the landscape, have grown tremendously in population and become something of a nuisance, much like invasive non-natives. They just love the Maryland suburbs and they land in parks and leave their crap all over the place. But I still like them; they've got a sort of earthy grace.

Last week I was up on Rockville Pike with my mother doing xmas shopping, and the sky was just amazing. It had been raining off and on and the clouds were starting to thin out but the sun was setting, turning all the clouds into lovely mixtures of red and purple, with bits of blue sky in between. Over in the east, there was a rainbow for a bit. I wanted to take a picture, but I didn't have a camera with me; after all, why would I ever bring a camera along to a place as ugly as Rockville Pike? But I guess even a place like that can bring unexpected beauty.

Notre Dame

Moon Phase: Waxing Gibbous
Weather: Cold and partly cloudy

I took this photo in 2000, when I visited Paris as a sort of school trip while I was homeschooling. I may not be Christian, but Notre Dame de Paris is a sacred place to me. I just love gothic architecture, and Notre Dame is a wonderful expression of it--and it's easily the most famous gothic building in the world. There's something very forest-like in a cathedral's tall pillars and stained glass windows, which filter light like leaves. In the book Native Roots, Jack Weatherford suggests that humans try to mimic the forest in our architecture, and I think he's right:

Something of the forest can be seen even in the column clusters of Greek and Roman temples, and in the cathedrals of Europe. After the Europeans destroyed most of their great forests and covered the land with farms, manors, castles, and cities, they built large temples such as the cathedral of Notre Dame at Chartres...The interior of the building reaches toward the sky, and the builders decorated it with multicolored windows that let light stream in as though coming through the trees...No matter how urban humans have become, something within them still longs for the forest.

Notre Dame stands in the middle of Paris on an island in the Seine known as Ile de la Cité, and the island has been a sacred site for millennia. Construction on the cathedral started in 1163; before that, a smaller church, the Saint Etienne Basilica, stood on the spot. During the Roman Empire, the Romans built a temple to Jupiter there--and Jupiter, incidentally, originates from the same Indo-European thunder god as Yahweh, the god that Christians now worship in the same place. There are suggestions that the Romans built the temple there because it was already a sacred place to the Gauls, who held ceremonies on the island to honor their own gods.

Probably what I felt when I stood in that cathedral was merely the beauty of the architecture, the darkness broken by candlelight and stained glass windows. But maybe I could sense what made that place sacred to all the people who have stood there over the years. Our modern religions focus worship toward the skies and perceive the world temporally, but animist cultures see the world in spatial terms, relating to events by location rather than time. Sacred places are the centers of these religions, and the people of these religions emphasize the spiritual bond between them and these locations. Standing in a place like Notre Dame, I can understand that sense of sacred place.

UCC ad

Moon Phase: Waning Crescent
Weather: Snowing

I heard something the other day about NBC refusing to run some queer-friendly ads by the United Church of Christ, which I thought was really stupid. I mean, NBC does Will and Grace, but ads about accepting queer people at church are too controversial? Come on. Anyway, I caught one the other day, and I got tears in my eyes. Literally. It was just so sweet -- shots of a bouncer in front of a church not letting in a gay couple, and then a voice over about how Jesus would never turn anyone away. And that's just exactly right. Every time I hear some "Christian" talking about the sin of homosexuality, they're always so incredibly hostile--way more than they are for other sins (except maybe abortion). That's just not the way that Jesus was. He accepted everyone, no matter what, and he never once mentioned homosexuality being wrong. He would never be hostile. He's like Gandhi, or George Fox, or Martin Luther King. And if the people who call themselves Christian really acted like that, this world would be a very different place.

Anyway, I'm very happy about this ad. I like the UCC--it's the church that's connected with my college, and it's pretty cool for a Christian church, very liberal.