I am writing this post tonight in honor of all those in northern Japan; the families who have lost family or searching and those who are suffering and in living in fear.  With all the disasters of late (Haiti, Katrina, and flooding around the county), it seems somehow even worse that the nation that honors calm and saving face so much should have its worse nightmares played out on the news channels around the world for all to see.  The images on the television are heart-breaking and words fail me.

Special thoughts about them and especially the 50 Fukushima workers who tried to stop further radiation leaks:

These are the words from the BBC at the Daily Kos:

“These are very brave people.”

So prayers for the resourceful, brave, cold, frightened, homeless, hungry, and thirsty in northern Japan recovering from the quake and tsunami.

Prayers for all those living in Japan and suffering from uncertainty.

And prayers for the Fukushima 50.

I hope that everyone including President Obama will stop and rethink nuclear energy as being “on the table” in our energy options.  As Marvin Resnikoff, senior associate with a radioactive waste company, writes at Huffington Post, there is no way to just pull the plug on what is happening in Japan.  “Nuclear reactors are not the same as coal/oil/gas electricity plants. Unlike conventional plants, they cannot be turned off.“  The reactors cannot be unplugged and while an earthquake of 9.0 once seemed unthinkable, it happened.  The devastation of the earthquake and the tidal wave are now compounded by a nuclear disaster equal to Chernobyl.  It seems that, besides sending aid, the best thing we can do is to reconsider using something that we obviously cannot control or predict as a source of energy.

I, in no way, think that Japan or any country that suffers disasters has some how earned this or that my God or any god has sent tragedy down on their heads.  I don’t even subscribe to the idea that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.  Obviously this doomsday scenario in northern Japan is more than the best experts can handle or stop.  When I heard that the Japanese government was asking the US for helicopters to shoot water down on the reactor last night, I thought this is going to make Chernobyl look mild!  

I am ironically reading a book called Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams.  It is one daughter’s account of the rising of the Great Salt Lake and the loss of bird habitat as she faces her mother’s struggle against cancer.   Breast and ovarian cancer has devastated her family who had lived down wind from underground nuclear testing conducted in the 1950s.  As victims fought for justice, it was not until “1990 that President George Bush approved the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act in 1990 under which the government apologized to the victims for the irresponsible behavior of managers at the Nevada Test Site and established a trust fund to pay for some of the injuries.”  It was certainly too little and too late.

So I hope and pray that we will learn from the tragedy in Japan before it is too late.  I agree that it is not productive to ratchet up fear or sensationalize the events unfolding before our eyes; I do think that we are fools to think that it cannot happen here.  And I do believe that God gives us wisdom to learn and grow from our mistakes and arrogance about our ability to control events and nature.  Let this be a wake up call to how puny we are and how much we have to learn.