a moon, worn as if it had been a shell

I'm the sort of person who looks at the vastness of the universe and is comforted, rather than terrified, by my own smallness and relative insignificance. I've always told my boys that one of my dreams is to go up into the atmosphere in a rocket ship and look out a window at the Earth in space. I'm so drawn to astronauts' words of that experience, and this morning, when I read my friend, fellow writer and mother of a child with epilepsy, Christy Shake's post, I was inspired.

I feel at turns disgusted and terrified at the havoc wrought in the name of power, religion and territory in the Middle East. As the Hamas rockets fly and the Israeli bombs return, I deflect the insanity with a sort of bitter humor. That'll show 'em, I might mutter, when I read the leaders' threats. This show of force will surely be the end of all conflict. 

There's nothing new under the sun, is there? The Old Testament had it right, at least there.

I wonder if the Universe -- whatever force inherent in it -- looks at our beautiful blue and green globe and sees it as insignificant, just a speck in a vast continuum.