On the tragedy in Japan

Henry Scott Holland (1847-1918) was professor of divinity at the University of Oxford and the canon of Christ Church in Oxford. He wrote “Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!”

-------------------------------------------------------------

It is hard to imagine writing this and feeling its truth. When we watch TV these days and see how many people have perished or are missing in Japan, we know that death is something, not nothing at all. But these words were written by Holland to comfort loved ones, who needed to hear that their departed loved ones were not really so far away from them, just in another ‘room’. And if it was possible to keep life as normal as possible, then it was possible not to miss the departed so much because they were really still with us. My thoughts tonight go out to the Japanese people. I cannot shake the images that I have seen on TV. I also saw that the film Hereafter was pulled from Japanese theaters. I am glad, because that film opens with a horrific tsunami. I have written about this film in another post. It’s hard not to ponder death, the meaning of death, the horror of death as Japan has experienced. Why do so many people have to die in this way? It is not possible to ignore the suffering, the tragedy, the sheer overwhelming feeling of helplessness. How does one help? Is it best to pray? Send money? Hope for the best? What is the best in the face of this kind of destruction? If the nuclear reactors experience meltdown, what then? Suddenly out of nowhere, tragedy strikes. That is how tragedy operates. Earthquake, tsunami, meltdown? Life-changing events. Lives changed forever. There but for the grace of God go we, an old expression that means that it could have been us given other circumstances but that God’s grace spared us. Why didn’t it spare the Japanese people? It’s hard to understand this. It’s hard to understand the immensity of this type of suffering. It’s hard not to get overwhelmed. But it’s important not to because we must be ready to help, at any time. I admire the soldiers and all the medical personnel who are helping in the search for survivors. They are heroes. I just hope they survive the trauma of what they see and deal with. And mostly I hope that the Japanese children find some sort of solace—it must be terrifying for them to see what is happening around them and not to understand it. I wish I could wave a magic wand and make it all go away for them. I wish that so intensely.  

Nowhere to run to

And so it happened again, a major earthquake that generated a devastating tsunami—this time off the coast of northeast Japan. The horrific images of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that rolled in over Thailand and Indonesia are still vivid in my memory. This quake in Japan was a major one—a magnitude of 8.9 on the Richter scale is being reported, and that is scary enough. Just as disturbing are the video footages of the tsunami sweeping across coastal farmland carrying boats, cars and burning houses in its wake. Other videos show submerged cars and boats being pushed toward a highway overpass, and it is both terrifying and amazing to see how boat masts are just crushed like plastic toys. I watch such scenes and cannot help but think of the Mayan prophecy that says that the world will end in 2012 (more precisely, the Mayan calendar ends on the Gregorian calendar date of December 21, 2012 which has led to intense speculation about what this means for the planet). And if you have seen the film 2012 (not very good except for the special effects for earthquake scenes and subsequent destruction) you will understand that there really is nowhere to run when these types of things happen, because there is usually very little warning. I am glad that we do not live in a geographical area that is prone to earthquakes. My thoughts go to the Japanese people—I hope and pray that there will not be a huge loss of life as there was in Indonesia.

The power and fury of nature and of water never cease to amaze me. I just wrote about the Akerselva river and how its fish and insect life died in the space of one night due to a chemical spill. But the river itself keeps running down to the sea and hopefully always will. Back in November 2000, unusually large amounts of rainfall in Oslo resulted in extremely high water levels in the Akerselva that threatened to flood surrounding areas. We live about a five-minutes’ walk from the river, at a point where there are small waterfalls. When we opened our apartment windows facing toward the river, we could hear the river as it roared past. We joined many others who stood watching from a safe distance as this ordinarily peaceful river roared mightily past us. The spray from these falls was so intense as to take your breath away. I have never seen so many people out late in the evening, watching the river, photographing and filming its wildness. We are drawn to that which scares us. We watch even though we don’t want to. Even in the current video footage from Japan, there are motorists on the highway overpass who got out of their cars to see what was going on, in spite of the huge danger. I would like to think that I would have floored my car and sped off. But who knows, perhaps it was smartest to stay on the overpass bridge. It seemed to be made of solid cement and to be able to withstand the onslaught of the ocean water, and it was not submerged, at least not at the time point that the video footage was shot. I hope so anyway. The tanker truck that stopped on the bridge remained there. Perhaps the driver understood that there was nowhere to go. That must be the scariest thought of all—that there is nowhere to go, nowhere to run to. The digital age, with the ability to send live footage in the space of a few seconds via iPhones and cell phones generally has brought with it the possibility of literally stepping into another person’s shoes, for better or for worse. We know how they must feel. We see how horrific it is and know what they face. Nowhere to run to—a sobering thought that pulls us out of ourselves for some minutes and makes us see what is happening elsewhere. We are forced to face our mortality. And it is not war but nature that does this to us.