What God Might Say About Haiti
WHEN the unspeakable happens on such a gigantic scale as in Haiti, it's natural to ask, "How could a loving God let this happen?" As a person of faith, I can imagine God replying:
"I take responsibility for the earthquake and its horrendous consequences. My sorrow is deep, deep, deep. I just couldn't figure out how to make a dynamic world without shifting tectonic plates and fault lines.
"I didn't see a way to fill the world with life without also allowing death. It didn't seem possible to make beings capable of love without accepting the anguish of having the beloveds suffer and die. Can you forgive me for creating a universe that gives a place to all this suffering?
"Even if you can't forgive me, please know that I'm walking through the rubble in Haiti. I'm under the fallen hospitals and crushed schools, am sharing the agony of the suffering. I'm comforting the hurt, strengthening the weak, empowering the rescuers. Please join me."
Richard K. Taylor, Philadelphia
Fact Checking The Crossword
Please inform your cruciverbalist that boas are not a type of python. Scientifically they belong to different families, Boidae and Pythonidae respectively. Lumping them together because they are large snakes is as erroneous as considering my mother a monotreme because she, like a platypus, has hair and produces milk. I, like a boa's offspring, did not hatch from an egg; a fact to which platypus and python offspring can not attest. I know it's "just the crossword," but facts are facts and should be checked more carefully.
Randy G. Bradley-Campbell,
via e-mail.