c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) I have seen too much of death. After two weeks in Sri Lanka and Indonesia, visiting stricken sites, listening to stories of loss and survival, passing bodies on the roadside, standing beside mass graves, feeling even more helpless than I felt before beginning our trip, I am eager to do something the thousands of people we met cannot yet do _ leave it all behind and go home.

Perhaps I have seen and smelled and heard and tasted enough and have reached my emotional limit. Yet even from the comfort of my seat on the plane heading home, the questions persist. What should I make of the thousands of survivors who see the tsunami as a judgment of God, or the result of bad karma, or punishment for some unknown collective social or national evil? Can the meaning we attach to an event be more crippling than the event itself?

Then the big question _ “Where is God in this tragedy?”

It is a question I have struggled with throughout this trip and here is what I think. To look for God in the tsunami is to look in the wrong place. Rather, what about the day after day after day in which the sun rises warm on our faces, the sea moves in perfect rhythm, the waters offer us nourishment, security and joy? What about the mornings when our children awaken rested and happy, when we draw fresh air into our lungs and feel our hearts beat in our chests? What about the times when everything works orderly and predictably? Isn’t God in these?

And what of tsunamis? They, too, are part of the natural rhythm of life to which we may or may not be attuned. A wildlife researcher in Sri Lanka told us that almost no animals were harmed by the tsunami because they are able to sense danger and move instinctively to higher ground. “Elephants can sense seismic activity through the pads in their feet,” she said.

I am no theologian, but it seems to me that if we want to find God in the midst of a disaster, the place to look is not in the act but in the response.

Tsunamis happen because nature is simply what it is. But the responders _ the helpers of the world _ act from a willful and caring place. Whether through Buddhist monks housing refugees, Muslim volunteers providing food and clothing, Christians offering counseling and medicine, Hindus offering prayers and gentle hands, or persons of no particular faith giving money, time and skills to ease the suffering of others, God is very much alive and present in them and through them. These people don’t need a doctrine or a theology _ they need only to be attuned to the spirit of compassion and goodness already within them _ like the pads of an elephant’s feet _ and respond as faithfully as they are able.

Frederick Buechner wrote, “If you want to know the kind of person you are as distinct from the kind of person you like to think you are, keep an eye on where your feet carry you.” If our insides lead us to higher ground, then we need look no further to find God. God is as near as your own heartbeat.

I have seen too much of death. But I have also witnessed an extraordinary response _ a woman named Stien Djalil of Church World Service delivering food, messages and medical supplies, who touches the faces of orphan children, counsels shocked volunteers and prays for the dead, all in one day. I have seen Clarence Mendis at Farms Lanka organize an entire community of volunteers using his own meager resources and still take in an entire family left homeless. I have seen the gifts of thousands of caring people used in beautiful ways by helpers from every continent whose doctrines are far less important than their deeds.

My closest friends know that I harbor something of a lover’s quarrel with religious “stuff” _ the vacuous God talk, theological gymnastics crafted to impress and exclude, ponderous titles and decorative robes hiding God-knows-what. But this tsunami experience has helped me to take a gentler approach to these.

If in humanity’s organized religions there is a word that enables people to be responders _ that sharpens their instincts and leads them to higher ground _ then it may be worth whatever trouble we take to nurture it along. We do that not for its own sake, of course, but because there are tsunamis all around us _ in our homes, in our children’s lives, in our neighborhoods, in our own hearts. We don’t have to travel to the ends of the earth to feel them.

We need only be attuned to the signs where we live, and know that we are enough, wherever we are, to be the answer when those in need ask, “Where is God in this?”

(Vince Isner is director of FaithfulAmerica.org, an online advocacy service of the National Council of Churches.)

KRE/MO END RNS