You see that picture of the Chinese man who used a rope to tie his wife's body onto his back so he could transport her to a morgue on his motorcycle?

I did. When I stopped bawling and thinking of what it would be like to do for to my wife, or my kids, I went to the Red Cross site and donated a bunch of money. Did that for Myanmar, too. And New Orleans. And the Tsunami places.

Every now and again something awful big and shitty happens, because life happens. And I can't make my car payment for a month and I get nervous about the bills and I still feel way, way better than that guy with his wife strapped to him, I suspect.

I grew up in California - Earthquakes are a matter of fact there, and after a while one becomes as jaded as an Oklahoman who shrugs while staring at the wreckage of his house and barn after a tornado: "you live around here long enough, you're gonna see shit like this happen."

I guess I'm not so jaded. I'm just really goddamn sad and tired today. I don't like the idea of everything in my house having a "Made In China" stamp on it, but these folks on their knees crying over the bodies of their children are, probably, not too different from us are they?

The hardest issue, dear lad, in what the Bibo Sez, and what it doesn't, is the daily human struggle of grappling with the Bad Stuff that sooner or later will hammer us all.

This issue - the Problem of Evil, oft call Theodicy - is the attempt to somehow justify human suffering in the face of infinite Goodness of God in what the Bibo Sez.

And no one seems to quite have a good handle on it.

But we are here: we are alive and human; we care about each other, our families, and our future.

There is strength in that, and somehow, I find solace in that, even if my grasp of it is weak and flawed.

In one understanding, "God" is a reflection of the highest and best hopes and desires of humankind.

And in that sense, I say,

Bless you.