I hope you are thinking about the thousands of people who, as I write these words, continue to suffer the effects of climate change.  Homes and towns flooded, wildfires destroying acres and acres of forest and prairie, food and water shortages and consequent rises in crime, governments and corporations arguing over the obvious while missing the larger point, and more:  it's a bleak picture of the human condition.  And that of the planet.

    Although we might dispute over causes, we cannot dispute over effects:  they are enormously real.  And affect real people.  Real human beings.  If you are safe, be grateful.  And give of your time and resources to help those who are not.  If you are in the midst of pain and loss, I'm sorry, so very sorry that you are having to endure these things.  In many ways, these didn't need to happen.

    Scientists have been warning of the coming of these titanic shifts in planetary patterns of heat, cold, rain, and drought for decades.  Some of us heeded them, some of us did not.  Some still do not.  But the suffering they have spawned is directly present before us.

    Pray that human myopia does not overcome human and global pain.  We're all in this together.  Talk of inhabiting Mars notwithstanding, we only have one Earth on which to live.

    And, happily, a God who still loves it--and us.  If we believe it.