I am without many words in the face of so much suffering, loss, and pain. It is paralyzing for the first few moments of consideration, then my heart rushes out wanting to do something.
What?
Google has a starting point, just in case you haven't seen it...
http://www.google.com/tsunami_relief.html
I have a few ideas in the works, and will let all of you know if we get anything up and running.
Of The Best Stuff, but Cracked
5 comments:
I share Amanda's distress about this natural disaster. I think the best way to help may be just to contribute money to groups that are already on the job, such as Oxfam, The Salvation Army, or the American Friends Service Committee. I decided to channel my help through the latter, probably just because it is affiliated with Quakerism and has my trust. (Though I read between the lines that they don't know exactly how they are going to use the money yet.) Links to all three can be found at my blog Brooklyn Quaker.
Please circulate this URL:
http://tsunamihelpneeded.blogspot.com/
they are also seeking bloggers to help keep sites updated and running. Info can be found via that site as well.
In love & sorrow
Nicole
I'm curious how people maintain faith that God has a hand in the world's events in the face of a tragedy like this? Do they believe that these people were meant to die at this time? If we thank God for a sunny day, do we accept that God was behind this? Or do we believe that there are natural forces that have nothing to do with God?
for me, God is in the outpouring of empathy and kindness that surrounds these terrible events.
After Sept 11, Helen Tworkov, editor of the Buddhist magazine Tricycle, said: "I volunteered to go to Ground Zero, I think, for the same reasons that many people did. I wanted to do something. But I think I went down there out of a sense of civic duty. I didn't go down there out of any kind of great spiritual awakening. But once I got down there, there was something very compelling about being in that space, and it had to do with the way people were relating to each other. There was so much kindness and so much tenderness.
With 9/11, there was this monumental, massive act of destruction, and it took a tremendous amount of planning. It took a lot of thinking about. It took a lot of orchestration. It took a lot of synchronicity. It took a lot of people getting together and planning and going to flight school and talking to each other and raising a lot of money and figuring out how all of this was going to happen. It took an enormous amount of energy to be that destructive.
And when it happened, the day that it happened, the hours that it was happening, these stories of people waiting for their friends or not leaving their friends, or walking out in such peaceful lines, and these firemen and these policemen running upstairs to help people, and the way people treated each other- where did all that come from? There was no planning. There was no thought went into that. I mean, everybody was stunned. And within that being stunned, this kindness came out. And it came out a lot and everybody talked about it.
Everybody that was there, everybody that was in those buildings, everybody that was in those streets, running uptown, everybody talked about it. Where did it come from? It was just there."
This is where I find God, during these times.
Nicole
Thank you all for your comments - Nicole - I value what thee has said here so much.
I agree with you that I find God in the response...
The question of "God, where the **** are you" or worse, the idea that "This is God's will" or "part of His plan" or things like that - I just can't...well, it doesn't compute. this is why I am so touchy about the idea of a personal, anthropomorphized God who "thinks" and "plans" and plays the world like his personal strategy game. A lot of people seem to view God as the Uber Sims Player. I can't see it that way...I can't even really talk about it, which makes me feel a bit helpless. Do I think that these horrors are a way for us to encounter God? Hell yes. Do I think God "makes" or "lets" these things happen IN ORDER that we might experience him through them? Oh, hell no.
Sometimes I feel close to that old heresy - oh which one was it? Where the idea was that God had set the world to spin like a top and then just stepped back to watch?
Well, not exactly. Not so bleak...but something like that which I can't put words to.
So I guess I haven't got much to add, except to say, I find the reason for God in that sick, disoriented, weightless feeling I have at the thought of deep tragedy, in that weird vacumn, and I find the reality of God in that which rushes in to fill it.
Post a Comment