Another disaster has struck the planet -- a natural disaster worsened by a manmade calamity. A 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti yesterday, January 12. Thousands or perhaps even hundreds of thousands of people may have been killed, millions displaced and a capital destroyed. We have, in some ways, become immune to seeing or reading about these events -- from the tsunami in Indonesia, the hurricanes and floods in the American South, and to the earthquakes in Asia. Each year brings more names to a growing list that the planet is turbulent and volatile, and we are just temporary residents often living under conditions that are not conducive to surviving these events. We live too close to fault lines or shores, we build homes and buildings of cheap and flimsy materials, we have stripped the land of trees to hold back the mud, and have separated ourselves by race, economics, and even gender.

These types of disasters of epic proportions illustrate vividly that we are really only a moment's step from oblivion. I know that it sounds nihilistic and bleak, and that is not my intention. For most of us in the developed world, especially western nations, we try to protect ourselves from the wrath of nature. We build to code, we chart fault lines, we buy flood insurance, waterproof our homes, and take many other steps to shield ourselves from the tragedy and disaster that our sister countries around the world experience annually. We are fortunate to have been born or to live in a world with these opportunities. What the earthquake in Haiti illustrates is that we are all connected, even if not by geography, but by the human spirit of joy and now extreme suffering.

For most of us, we will never know what it is to feel as if the world has disappeared -- to not be able to find loved ones, to find shelter or food, to not have medical care for those who are injured, or to bury those who have died. What has happened on this poor island called Haiti is the next chapter in a history marked by violence, abuse, slavery, rape, illiteracy, starvation, and fear -- not by just one country but many -- many that are the leaders of the free world today.

Perhaps to rewrite this chapter, the world can unify to send aid, to send troops who will come to protect and not kill, and to send money to rebuild. In the biblical sense could this be the next Great Flood, which wiped out the misery of the past in order to build anew? Instead of animals on that ark, each one of us can play a part by contributing money and resources to a country -- to a people -- who have mainly known terror. It can start with each one of us providing that human connection to care.

Click here for a list of ways you can contribute and help.