An Uninterrupted Eden

Some scientists argue that the Earth may have been periodically pounded millions of years ago by asteroids that plunged the developing "Eden" back to square one, a cycle, they suggest, that happened many times over. It's just a theory, but there's no denying the fact that it can be very discouraging when we can't seem to make headway when suffering comes into our lives.

Peggy Noonan, writing for The Wall Street Journal, comments on a scene in Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down. The movie is about the Battle of the Bakara Market in Mogadishu, Somalia, in October 1993. In this particular scene, the actor Tom Sizemore, in the role of a hard-bitten, hard-core U.S. Army Ranger colonel, is in command of a small convoy of Humvees trying to get back to base with mortar and rocket fire exploding all round. In this violent vortex, the colonel guy stops the convoy, brings some wounded on board, throws a dead driver out of the driver’s seat and yells at a bleeding sergeant who’s standing in shock nearby:

Colonel: Get into that truck and drive.

Sergeant: But I’m shot, Colonel.

Colonel: Everybody’s shot, get in and drive.

Noonan is struck by those words: “Everybody’s shot.” They suggest a metaphor for life. Everyone has taken a hit, everyone’s been hurt. We’re all walking wounded.

She goes on to cite the case of Rosie O’Donnell, who more often than not is likely to be...