We experience tragedy. Whether it’s a hurricane, an earthquake, the early or unexpected death of a loved one, a mass shooting, or a terrorist attack which kills dozens or hundreds or thousands … we experience tragedy. And we have, as a race, experienced tragedy for thousands of years (or longer, depending on your viewpoint). So, I wonder why tragedy still takes us by surprise. Why are we always left reeling and searching for answers when bad things happen? Why do we not have the answers; or at least an inkling of an answer?
It seems that instead of seeking meaning in a tragic event we try to figure out who is to blame. It’s all God’s fault or the President’s or this agency’s or that company’s or that person’s or the Devil’s. As long as we can blame someone and focus on bringing that person to justice or bad-mouthing him or her long and hard enough we can get past the event and get on with our lives. But by doing this, we don’t learn a damn thing! Which is why, the next time something bad happens, we are dazed and confused all over again.
I think that it is religion’s place to give us reasons for tragedy. After all, religion lives with ideas about God and evil and morality and the after-life and the before-life. And religions have been trying to explaining the unknowable to us for as long as we can remember. So why, after thousands and thousands of years of religion, haven’t we gotten an answers that can be used in the real world? Why does tragedy still knock us off our feet?
Some of it, of course, is probably that we are not listening because we’re too busy blaming. But if our religious leaders have the answers, why are they not making us sit down and shut up and listen? And if they don’t have the answers, why not? Did the religious leaders of long ago have the answers but they were lost? If no one ever had the answers, then what good are the religions we have?
Maybe it’s time to be open to new religions or further evolve our current religions so that we can get the answers we need so desperately.
…but what if one of our purposes, intentions, missions, foci is to make ‘the search’ (for answers, meaning) that which causes us to grow… especially if one considers that we ourselves may have created all that we are calling evil or bad or unwanted? Maybe we can change what happens to us by imagination, wonder, gratitude for what we ‘be, do, have’. Maybe we’re like the “Flatlander”‘s (a book Einstein read as a child) trying to understand a 3-dimensional world. How many more dimensions will we continue to discover (I was told 49!)? Just a rambling thought.