When Lightning Strikes

There is a “Peanuts” cartoon in which little Linus is afraid to go to the library. Charlie Brown tries to relieve him of his fear, saying, “Everyone is lonely in one place or another.” Linus asks Charlie, “Where is that place for you.” Charlie answers, “Earth.”

The famous cartoonist, Jules Pfeiffer, once was discussing a certain cartoon strip he did for the newspapers. In it, a little boy doesn’t want to go to school because he fears his parents will move away while he is gone. He doesn’t want to go to bed at night because he fears his parents will die while he’s asleep. Coping with these fears is “like being on twenty-four-hour guard duty,” Pfeiffer said. He also said that he had received many letters from adults who told him, “That’s the way it is all right. But you don’t have to be a child to feel it.”

We are raised in a culture of fear. We fear death. We fear the loss…