I wrote this on New Year’s Eve 2004 just days after the Tsunami. 2005 saw its share of tragedy, too: the war, Hurricaine Katrina, the London bombing, there was more. Some thoughts from last year…

The last day of 2004 and we’re well rid of that one. It was a year,
alright, quite a year. Natural disaster, human suffering of unfathomable proportions, war,
political disaster, tragedy, human cruelty…

And yet daily life
goes on. The clock ticks, the internet connection hums, the children
need lunch, there is work to be done. The dailiness of things keeps us
going when nothing else does. It’s the ordinary things that pull us
through.

There’s a lot of talk right now about the absence of
God, the existence of God in the first place, the reality that bad
things happen to good people often, unremittingly, all the time, a lot.
Too much.

There are a lot of people who are very angry at
their God right now. And there are many whose belief in their God will
pull them through. Those without a belief in God are also in a quandry.
No matter what kind of God or no-God you’ve got, you’re probably
struggling to understand the breadth of this tragedy.

There is
also the unpleasant feeling of uselessness. At this distance, other
than contributing money, there is nothing to do but watch and cry. With
this comes a kind of survivor’s guilt – guilt for the fact that our
lives are (thankfully) untouched by this kind of pain and suffering.
Guilt for our abundance, guilt for the superficiality of what ails us
right now.

And then there’s the fear, a deep, penetrating one:
what happens if and when our lives are touched by such terribleness.
What would we do?

When bad things happen, Fred Rogers, that
dapper genuis of children’s television, used to say, "Look for the
good." Even in the worst of times, he’d say, there is good to be found.

In this case, one has only to look at the faces of the
survivors who are burying the dead, beginning to clean up, helping one
another heal. Good people the world over are also flocking there to
help: Doctors Without Borders, the International Red Cross, and other
local and international organziations are pitching in. There is good to
be found.

For the moment, the world’s focus is on this tragedy
— everyone is grieving for the missing, praying for the survivors, and
trying to help in some small way.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if
this shared moment could change the course of history? Wouldn’t it be
amazing if the world came together and recognized the importance of
daily life, the power of the ordinary, the simple things that everyone
holds dear?

Wouldn’t that be amazing?