The Fires

Posted on November 7, 2003 in Attitudes Disasters Reflections

What can we learn from the ashes? That everything can not be for the best in this best of all possible worlds, for one thing. The lesson of the 18th century’s Lisbon earthquake, when thousands died during High Mass, comes back to us every time nature sweeps out of the mountains.

I hope, too, we set aside karmic explanations, the idea that we are being made to undergo lessons that we didn’t get in our past lives. The lesson of the Book of Job applies here: the fire cyclone, the showers that followed it, and, in fact, all events are inexplicable. The people who lost their houses may or may not be evil. Jack Welch and George W. Bush are not saints, yet they thrive.

Let me repeat, the lesson comes from the Book of Job not from the holocaust itself. It comes from the human psyche, that fantastic known and unknown territory where cerulean shafts of light gleam imaginatively. What this suggests is something different from karma or optimism. It suggests a spirit that, if developed and allowed to thrive, helps see us through the good and the bad, our triumphs and our mistakes. We must return to human experience to survive. We must count on what is in us — whether it is God-given or not — to move on.