The landscape of devastated northern Japan has become tragically familiar. See the remarkable collection of photographs from the Los Angeles Times, recording this descent into misery: http://framework.latimes.com/2011/03/12/scenes-of-destruction-in-aftermath-of-8-9-earthquake-in-japan.
If I had tried to imagine the landscape of Japan prior to this catastrophe, the best I could have done would have been some picturesque temple nestled in verdant mountains, borrowed from classical Japanese art. If I had had to picture a modern, urbanized Japan, I might have come up with a fragment of neon-lit Tokyo, bustling with fashionable youth and humming with malls, arcades, and nightlife. Not much in the way of human reality.
Now we have human reality in full measure, pressed down and overflowing. Peculiar, isn’t it? This people so prominent in history and in the modern world, with whom our destiny has been variously intertwined (speaking as an American), for whom we have had so many easy emotions, positive and negative, appear to us now in a strangely new human aspect.
One of the photographs shows a little girl in a pink parka, waiting for food in a line outside a grocery store. Barely visible on her jacket is the English logo, “Girls Party.” She could be plucked from our own daily lives; she could be our daughter, or our daughter’s best friend, except for what we read into her patient and sad expression.
What we read in her eyes is the surrounding landscape. It is unlike anything most of us have seen, a world tossed and jumbled together, more like the spilled contents of a child’s toy chest than a recognizable “real” world. Against the outlines of the natural environment, all is covered by a layer of detritus in which the crushed and disconnected elements of our human world can be discerned. Where there are paths, people wander, singly or in small groups. Everywhere, people are searching for their families, their relatives and neighbors. The buildings that survive become camps for the survivors, and the people there seem few and closely gathered.
Inevitably, there are attempts to find meaning in what has happened. In the case of the recent earthquake in Haiti, it was obvious that the destructive effect was magnified by poor construction, and its lingering effects by poverty and marginalization. With Japan, one can hardly speak of poverty or gross inequality or lack of preparation. As regards the inherent danger of nuclear energy, point taken, but that is only one aspect of this disaster.
Some voices say that this was an “act of God” in the literal sense, divine punishment of some sort visited on the Japanese people. That is obscene, contemptible. I like Jim Wallis’s answer: “God is suffering in the midst of the evil with those who are suffering. Throughout the Scripture, we find a picture of a God who is with the people, even in their darkest hours.”
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)
Sometimes, trying to isolate the meaning of events of great suffering is just bad faith, typical, I’m sorry to say, of people like me. Even the laudable desire to “do something” may be tainted by this bad faith, if it is called out on rare occasions when dramatic events saturate the news. There is hardship all around us, wherever we are, and smart, passionate people are working hard in our communities, people for whom our help would be invaluable. If you want to do something, do something. (If you are in Southern California, see the right-hand margin of this page, under “Messiah Programs and Partnerships,” otherwise “Organizations.”)
The task of recognizing our neighbors at all times, in all places, the task of living with a heightened awareness of our neighbors, is an ongoing labor of spirit, intellect, and culture.
