Some Thoughts on the Tsunamis

I think I should stop reading all this news stuff about the disaster in South Asia. The whole thing is just so unimaginable...I guess I feel on some level that if I can find out everything there is to no about it, it will make more sense. Like there's some piece of statistical or meteorological information that will explain how 60 foot waves can form, how an entire continent can slip underneath another continent, why 150,000 people died in an instant.

But, of course, there isn't. The more you read, the more words you scan about devastation and horror, and you may get a bit more numb to it after a while, but you don't start to feel any better. I also have no money or anything, so there's not really anything proactive I can do.

Anyway, I was reading this story on Yahoo about, you know, misery and horror in the aftermath of an insanely massive natural disaster, and there was this little detail at the end of the article that really drove the whole "immense power of nature" point home for me. Check this out:

In a rare piece of happy news, an Indonesian tsunami survivor rescued after five days at sea had another reason to celebrate. She'll have her first baby in less than six months.

"I am happy and thankful," said 24-year-old Malawati, who is recovering in a northern Malaysian hospital after being plucked from shark-infested waters last week. Her husband was swept out with her, but vanished.

Okay, before I get to the fascinating factoid here, I'd just like to say a word to the author of this otherwise fine article, The Associated Press' Jocelyn Gecker. A pregnant woman rescued from shark-infested waters after watching her husband be swept out to sea during the worst natural disaster in recent world history does not constitute "happy news." It's a rare piece of not entirely tragic news, but only because at least one person survived.

But the thing that's truly amazing about this story is that this woman and her husband were swept out to sea. A big wave came and crashed over them, and the two of them wound up stuck in the ocean for five days. Can you fathom (har!) a wave pulling you that far out into the ocean? Granted, the article doesn't say if the woman and her husband were, in fact, on the beach, or even in the very shallow portion of the ocean, when the storm hit, but this seems unlikely, unless she's one of those rare pregnant women who likes to go tsunami surfing.

So, in addition to the human toll, which I won't even bother to record here because it grows each day, I can't come to grips with the incredible force of this event. I'm not a God kind of guy, but when the ocean just opens up and swallows an entire section of the populated world, it's hard not to fixate on the big-time spiritual questions.