BRISBANE, Australia (UCAN) – The recent tsunami, typhoons and floods devastating the Asia-Pacific region rekindled my memories of Boxing Day 2004 back home in Sri Lanka.
My mixed memories could be framed in Dickensian imagery of the “worst of times” leading through a “winter of despair” to a “spring of hope.” The one-day disaster’s unprecedented wave of deaths and destruction evoked the best of the human spirit, though occasionally dented by traits of Cain.
Boxing Day 2004 “was the day that changed my life,” says Donny Paterson, an Australian who volunteered to work in tsunami-hit Sri Lanka. “No Ordinary Bloke,” a book published here recently, claims the author “rescued a village … and saved himself.” Even as of now, many such volunteers, locals and guests, discover themselves in the service of disaster-hit Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, the Philippines, Samoa, Taiwan, Thailand or Vietnam. Indonesia alone attracted volunteers from 20 countries.
Adversity brings strange graces. And humanitarian outreach by individuals and groups echoes the service commitment of great souls like Francis of Assisi, Peter Damien of Molokai or Mother Teresa of Kolkata. As evident in the lives of sainted pioneers, volunteers carry forward their ministry of human fellowship.
Additionally, modern means of communication are a blessing to volunteerism. As anticipated by Jesuit scientist Father Teilhard de Chardin, the computer, the Internet, the worldwide web and blogging boost instant networking. These channels of intercommunication convey news of disasters, ascertain needs, pool human energies, assemble resources, rout aid and can even monitor use and abuse of opportunities.
The melding of artificial intelligence and human wisdom has the potential to do more. Such enlightened humanitarian interaction has a spiritual dimension. Call such spiritual exchange “holiness in action” or what-you-will, the proof of its authenticity lies beyond emergency relief, long-term rehabilitation or counseling. In the language of Father Chardin, the resulting interconnectivity is “an evolutionary pathway” that upspirits donors and donees as a globalizing community.
When gifting me a copy of his 1971 book “Evolution and Revolution,” Martin Wickramesinghe, the doyen of Sri Lankan writers, showed me the book’s special chapter on Father Chardin. It focused on the Jesuit scientist’s theory of noogenesis when “man will transcend himself”. It also quoted what the Jesuit’s book “Divine Milieu” had to say about a mystical transformation with “the whole group of mankind forming a single body and a single soul in charity.”
Charity is also intrinsically linked with justice and the common good, as noted in Pope Benedict XVI’s recent encyclical, “Charity in Truth.” Hence ensoulment as a sharing community is bound with the duty to search for holistic solutions for disasters. And the noogenesis advanced by the “nervous system” of modern media equips humanity with insights to intuit that disasters are less an act of God than an outcome of our failed mandate to bring Creation to fruition.
Unbalanced advancement of knowledge has soared heavenward in many ways at the cost of the biblical mandate to “subdue the Earth” even in its very literal sense. Space travel and nuclear shields have continued to obsess scientists and politicians amid persistent abuse of the Earth and its blessings. When will disasters awaken thinking humanity to the responsibility of stewardship in justice?
Instead of merely blaming the Earth’s tectonic plates, the human community must foster a new fellowship to push research through follow-up action to prevent disasters. Agencies like Caritas need to outsoar charity in a rainbow of justice.