From Thailand: a spiritual response in the post-tsunami reality

You can never be the same after such an event. At nights I am awakened by thoughts of these brothers and sisters of mine in the southern part of the country. I know these regions – pearls of beauty. Now it all seems destroyed: things and people.
Within me, the age-old question surfaces over and over again: “What is a human being?” “What sense does life have?”
Throughout the country a cry rings out: “Why… why did all this happen?”
This pain cuts through the air, like the terrible stench of decomposed corpses. You can hardly take a step without seeing one.

Buddhists and Christians agree that after the catastrophe the biggest job now is spiritual in nature – to respond to the sense of bewilderment gripping the hearts and minds of many people.
Fortunately, after a long period of scarce blood supply, now donors are flooding the hospital corridors. There are even too many. Twice my friend and I were turned back. I keep having sleepless nights: the cry of suffering people, and the thousands who run to their aid are in my ears.

Once, when I got home, I found a small white box lying on my desk. In it was the money a Political Science student and his friends had collected. Remorsefully, I remembered that not long ago I had judged this boy as “insensitive” to the needs of others. Then a teen-ager arrived with a sack full of his clothes “for our people in the south.” So did another family. Everybody is in a rush to give aid, everybody wants to do something. One of our friends asked me to lend him my car. He was going to give away some of his extra clothes, and he couldn’t manage all the packages on his motorcycle. Yes, this was his chance to give wings to his life.

The whole country has changed, the people are transformed. I’ve lived with the Thai people for 20 years now, but never have I seen them like this, so ready to give and working at it all together. I am grateful for the chance to be here, to mourn their dead – which now are mine – together with them and do something together with numerous others. Everyone and everything has been mobilized: even the helicopter of a Thai princess, which will transport the Swedish child who was miraculously saved. The princess herself lost her son in the waves. I also recognized a popular actress at work in the middle of the relief packages and medicines to be distributed. From the sparkle in her eyes, one can see that love lights us up and transforms us from within. A wealthy businessman used his motorized parachute to fly over stricken areas and inform others of bodies washed up on beaches since recovering decomposing corpses was the immediate need.

Therefore, the country is moved not only by economic bulletins; it is also moved by the scenes of so many of its own people dead and also those who came only for a vacation and lost their lives here. We are all human beings and we are all brothers and sisters: here is the answer that springs forth from within during the tsunami aftermath. The solidarity you breathe in the air as you walk through the streets is stronger than the blind, absurd hatred that stories of war repeat constantly. People are interested in the thousands of stories of solidarity “to the point of giving one’s life”, during and after the onslaught of the waves. An English girl is mourning a Thai stranger wearing an orange shirt, who saved her life by letting her hold on to a tree, while he himself got lost in the water. People now look at one another with new eyes. Distances and differences have disappeared. We are no longer dazed by success, health and prosperity. It could have been me in their place! In the final analysis this, I feel, is the meaning of life – a meaning underscored by this tragedy – suffering, borne generously in the service of others, unleashes love. This is why I an confident that one day “That all may be one” will be a reality.”

(L.B. – Thailand) translated from Città Nuova n�2/2005