My Dear Friends…
It is not possible to look at our world today in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan and not contemplate the meaning of life (and death), the purpose of events (be there any at all), and the function and intention of God (if there even is a “God”).
Is life, after all is said and done, just a series of random events, having no particular or specific Cause…no “reason” for occurring?
Are we, in the end, really and truly limited to standing by and suffering “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” as Shakespeare put it?
Should we, as he asked, “take arms against a sea of troubles, and, by opposing, end…the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to…”?
Even if we could, can we end them? Certainly we can change our basic human behaviors. We can create an end to war, bring a halt to violence, put a stop to poverty and hunger and man-made suffering. We don’t seem, as a species, to have the will to do so, but surely we certainly have the ability to do so.
But how can we have any effect at all on natural disasters? We have nothing to do with those...
…or do we….?
Has human behavior had anything at all to do with the creation of the worst storms this planet has ever seen?
We’ll look at that in just a moment. But first, a word of compassion and a plea for help and healing for those caught in the grip of this terrible typhoon. Our human family members need help right now in those areas struck by this calamity. Please see the story on our front page headlined EMERGENCY!, and do what you can do. Right now. Today.
And let us offer a collective prayer:
Dear God of our Highest understanding: Bring succor, comfort and healing to our brethren around the world who suffer today in the aftermath of this terrible disaster. Bring them the strength to endure their indescribable losses, to rebuild their lives in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever they held about Who They Are. Help them today, Dear God, with your mercy and compassion, giving them strength to endure the unendurable, that they might experience at this hour the indestructible nature of the human spirit — which is your spirit, Dear God, flowing through them. Amen, and amen.
And now, the question that this moment begs: Has human activity had anything to do with this cataclysm?
Haiyan has been called the biggest storm to hit landfall in the recorded history of Earth. It slammed the Philippines with 200+ mile-per-hour winds, flattening entire villages and killing an estimated 10,000 people. (By contrast, those winds had died down to “only” 74 mph, killing 13, by the time they had reached Vietnam.)
Has global warming done anything — anything at all — to create the conditions that are now spawning more and more violent storms at sea? Meteorologists and environmental scientists don’t even question this anymore. They know the answer.
Weather on our planet — producing, in cycles, heat waves, droughts, winds, torrential rains, floods, hurricanes, typhoons, tidal waves — has become more disastrous for a reason.
Yet there are those in our world community who continue to insist that “global warming” itself is the false cry of earring-sporting, Birkenstock-wearing, tree-hugging environmentalists; that it doesn’t even exist.
Or that if it does exist, human beings have had nothing to do with creating it.
The important thing is jobs. We’ve got to protect the economy, not the ecology, of the planet, these folks insist.
All attempts to control or limit global warming by calling for the altering of industrial and commercial activities that may add to the conditions that create it are roundly criticized and angrily and summarily rejected by those who declare that livelihood comes first in our world.
This, however, seems so shortsighted as to defy belief. Can the human species be so blind to the long-term effects of what it is doing? Can nothing save us from ourselves?
If something can, what might it be? Your ideas please, below. We’ve no time to lose. Your ideas, please.
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