[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

A Glass of Water

I run the kitchen tap until the water is just right, cold enough to 
startle, and drink off a good glassful. With every sip I give thanks for 
clean, cold water. I am aware that on the other side of the world, people 
today will be dying -- literally -- for lack of good water. I am aware that 
I am safe and sheltered and so are the people I love. I am aware that my 
community is, on the whole, in excellent shape. I am aware that whatever my 
griefs have been, they are minor (and largely my own doing). I try to 
stretch my mind to encompass even a fraction of the suffering going on in 
the tsumani-afflicted area, but my imagination isn't big enough. It's only 
big enough to see its own inadequacy.

Two good things in the midst of the tragedy: the tsunami didn't hit 
Bangladesh, and I haven't heard the phrase "act of God".  Perhaps there are 
people out there who are seeing the earthquake and tsumani as part of 
divine Providence, but if so, they're staying under the radar. Which is 
good. This isn't God's doing; it's Earth's. There is nothing fated or 
intentional about the human tragedy; it's the terrible coincidence of 
tectonic plates and human demography. A bigger earthquake forty years ago 
in Alaska killed fewer than 200. A much smaller quake a year ago killed 
40,000 in Bam.

If it's not our job to read God's will into this event, then how are we to 
turn it Godward? The obvious answer, of course, is simple: send help, as 
much and as fast and as intelligently as we can.  Send our hearts, too, in 
sympathy and prayer. It's a moment in which we can dwell, as Christians, on 
the love of God. Every single soul who died in Sunday's disaster was -- is 
-- known to God, intimately understood and beloved.  Whatever each soul's 
faults or failings, this was not what God wanted for that person.

If we can grasp that understanding and hold it in our hearts, if we can 
weep with the parents for their lost children, if we can sit with those who 
mourn, might it be possible to extend that understanding outward? If we can 
stretch ourselves to love strangers in their suffering, could we make a 
bigger stretch to see the humanity and decency and worth of all, even those 
with whom we disagree? Even those who we hate and seek to harm? For they 
too are God's children.

If we all did this, then there would be peace. I'm not holding my breath. I 
know we'll slide backward from this holy state of mercy, because we always 
do. The West will lose interest while the villagers of Indonesia and Sri 
Lanka, of coastal India and Thailand and Somalia and all other places that 
got hit last Sunday still have to suffer and pick up the pieces and somehow 
manage to rebuild. It would be a blessing of enormous proportions if we 
could take this opportunity to support a rebuilding based on care and 
respect, one that left the area economically and socially healthier than 
the tsunami found it. It's possible. It really is.

Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Soon, please God, 
soon.



******************

I'm about to hit some sacred cows, and they moo so badly. -- Phyllis 
Tickle, aka The Divine Miz T.