This morning I opened the newspaper to learn that 153 passengers have died in a fiery plane crash at the Madrid airport.  I was in that airport just three days ago, on my way to Amsterdam, and from there, flying back to Portland.  I remember remarking to my companion, “It’s amazing how safe air travel is these days,” and I went on to quote the latest information I had read about all the safety features now incorporated into planes, features which have been added because of our learning from past accidents. 

Spanair Flight JK5022 was troubled from the beginning.  One attempt at take-off had been aborted, and departure was delayed for an hour.  (Oregonian, 7/21)  And then shortly after take-off, the plane swerved off the end of the runway, crashed into a ravine, and burst into flames.  Many of those on board were families headed to the Canary Islands for late-August holidays.  Remarkably, 19 passengers survived, including 2 children.  Some people actually walked away from the wreckage, said Ervigio Corral, head of emergency rescue services.  But he added that he and other emergency workers faced a “grim scene of widely scattered corpses . . . .”

So I am safely home, with nothing more than jet-lag to contend with.  And memories of a lovely vacation in which absolutely nothing went wrong.  No accidents.  No illness.  Not even a mistake in the reservations or getting caught in the rain.  And I am thankful, because it might not have been so.  I might have been on the plane, or a plane, that crashed.  Any one of us might have been. 

And so I’m taking time once again this morning to remember the fragility of the flesh.  To remember that today I am here, but I am not promised tomorrow.  To know that this day, this hour, this moment, should be cherished and lived well, for we have the present, and that alone.

Further, then, I must ask myself, “What does it mean, to live well?”  Perhaps it means to live each day as if it were the last.  To live without rancor, to act with kindness, to move among others with an open heart, to speak no nonsense but only the truth, to laugh from deep within, to see beauty wherever it appears, to look upon suffering with compassion but never with pity, to walk with humility, knowing that only by grace am I living at all.  To acknowledge that one day I will be among those who have run out of time, run out of opportunity to work and play and love, and therefore to be awake, fully awake, while I live.