There is much to ponder during this Holy Week, and I need to get on my knees and do just that. Otherwise, the troubling realities and conflicts of the times can weigh a person down.

Just yesterday – the first full day of spring, when one’s thoughts should be free-wheeling as a kite or light as the pastel colors of Easter eggs – mine were heavy and confused. Thanks to three disparate articles in this very newspaper that seemed, at first glance, well and good until the contradictory conclusions became clearer.

One, of course, was the news story of the political and legal controversy surrounding the Terri Schiavo case, a case that has ignited Congress over the issue of life and death. A case that has taken a Florida court decision to remove feeding tubes from the severely brain-damaged woman right into the congressional chambers. To some, the action smacks of politics; to others, the extraordinary measures to prolong Schiavo’s life specifically define American “values,” as they’re so talked about these days.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said this: “The president believes that our society should be based on a culture of life. And in a society that is based on life, that means we should protect and defend and welcome life at all stages, and that includes people with disabilities.”

Oh, if it were just so.

The second story focused on a report by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan calling for changes to the U.N. so it can tackle conflicts and terrorism, fight poverty and put human rights at the forefront of its work.

The report said the Security Council’s decisions on whether to use force should be guided by a set of clear principles, and it urged all states to accept that in cases of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, there is a “responsibility to protect” that requires collective action.

Additionally, the report calls on developing countries to cut extreme poverty in half, ensure primary education for all children, improve health care, and halt and reverse the AIDS pandemic.

Oh, if it were so.

On the editorial page were the memorable words written by a Harrington letter writer, Brian Stewart, who told of a project in Washington and Hancock counties that remembers soldiers from the United States who have lost their lives in Iraq. To mark the second anniversary of the Iraqi war, Stewart said, cedar shingles memorializing the country’s war dead have been put on telephone poles along a 100-mile stretch of Down East highways.

He wrote: “As we pass the miles of placards mourning our dead, let us see as well the tens of thousands of Iraqis, the hundreds of thousands of children at risk, the many thousands maimed – and let us with all godspeed and humble heart search for ways beyond war.”

Oh, if it were so.