The Sunday School class I went to before I went deep into the bowels of our church to lead/referee the preschoolers often discussed topics of cultural reference. These topics usually had religious questions or meanings attached. This week the class will be ably led by our SuperTeacher in a discussion aboutGod and the tsunami.

I really must be a paegan because I don't understand where exactly God fits into the tsunami...except for the obvious places. Such as how the divine work of nature is so awesome and unimaginably complex that an earthquake under the sea could produce a wall of water thousands of miles across. Such as how the name of God, differently uttered in different cultures, was called on to ease horrid grief. And how God was prayed to by those of us not affected....as we hoped to ease the suffering of those whose loved ones were literally ripped from their arms.

But what I don't understand is how God's tsunami creation can be used - especially in a time of great pain and unbelievable loss - as a political platform. I don't understand certain folk who might compare the loss of thousands of people to the loss of unborn babies in our country. I mean, just don't do that. Really. It is NOT THE TIME. I also don't understand how the tsunami can be used as a way to witness to the unwashed masses. I might be wrong, but it seems like God was not sending a "message" to the thousands of impoverished Sri Lankans, Indians, Thai, and Indonesians who have lost so much. Noah built the ark and all, if you believe that sort of thing, but even then I don't think God was so freaking mean.

I also have a hard time believing, as Ann Graham Lotz does (and boy do I think she is an idiot), that this disaster was meant to show us that the afterlife is all that counts.

Instead, this disaster reminds me I am put here on Earth to support my fellow man. (It was one hell of a reminder, but still) That whilst I am not suffering, I should help those who do. That shit happens, dude, sometimes mind-boggling, nightmarish, more-than-we-can-fathom shit, and while it may ease my mind to pray or hope that it won't happen to me, it could, and tomorrow, and boy am I glad I don't have to deal with it alone.

Martin Buber explained - and this is my very simplistic understanding and description of it - that God is us. And so thanks, us, for helping out those people with donations, volunteer hours, and meditations. And us? Let me remember that I should be grateful, every single day, for a day without a tsunami. For a day without a choice to make about my loved one's medical status. For a day that I can make choices about my life and health.

For every single day.