Watching the heart rending footage out of Japan these last few days, I was reminded how we indeed are global citizens. How we all aspire to the same things, treasure our families and our homes, and share vulnerabilities. How we all live as puny beings in the shadow of natural events as well as our man made follies.
In November of 2005, I volunteered to go on a federally organized disaster relief deployment in New Orleans. I was privileged to spend almost all my days there working with First Responders and their families. They were exhausted, mightily traumatized, and all around us was wasteland as far as the eye could see. Homes with nothing left but the front cement stairs and some foundation. Cars and boats flipped onto lawns.The post tsunami footage feels eerily familiar - yet is far worse in scope, and comes with an unwanted helping of snowfall and nuclear risk as well.
Back in NOLA -at one point, a police officer grumbled some gruff appreciation and noted "I can't see why anyone would come here right now." My response, was that someday, we would need help too. And when that time came, we would need to lean on our brothers and sisters too. Surely the "great quake" which would level Northern California, which I had been hearing about since elementary school - was coming.
I saw some wretched things during deployment, but I also witnessed the purity of purpose which inspired thousands of volunteers. I bumped into a fellow Oaklander, who was cooking up breakfast for First Responders out of a camper in a makeshift, tarp covered feeding station. There were people there from every single state of the Union-and other countries too.
What our government was unequipped to handle - volunteers helped provide. Shelter, food, animal rescue, clothes, comfort, medicines, information, childcare...
Whether the damages and pain occurs in Louisiana, China, New Zealand, Haiti, Libya, Ivory Coast, or Japan, we all have a little something we could share. Just imagine what would help you, what will help us when our "big one" hits-and lend a hand.
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