De Maria Rosa, National Coordinator Chile, Concepción, Chile
From Facebook:
"For the WCCM - Please pray for us. This is the single biggest help you can provide. Please pray for an end to this madness. "
" This is total chaos - people have weapons they looted the houses are obscured. Last night our neighbors ... we fought and defended our home, this is horrible, no electricity, no water or food. "
"Please pray during the night we must monitor the streets for the looters did not come into our homes. This is even worse than the earthquake or the tsunami - has been terrible. Depending on what happens today and if I can manage to get gas will go to Santiago with the children. "
"Thank you very much, I've been here only because I can feel that" we are all united "in the sentence. I love you! "The Father Laurence
: Note March 1, 2010
02.03.2010, Chile
" We need prayers - and more men! ". Most of us will never experience a situation of collapse of social infrastructure like this that makes us cry from Facebook, our last and only means of communication with the outside world. A world suddenly becomes frightening exterior encloses and isolates us in a tragedy.
all know, but consciously prefer to forget, life rests permanently on the edge of the knife. At a time when our whole sense of security, systems management and plans for life, may evaporate and instead of thinking about how we dress for a dental appointment tomorrow and interviews we find ourselves staring into an abyss mareadamente. Took 120 seconds for this to happen to the people of Chile as the tectonic plates groaned and moved to produce the world's largest earthquake and suddenly
after the tsunami hit the coast with waves of 10 meters.
As soon as I heard the news tried to contact Maria Rosa, our national coordinator who lives in Conception Chile, the second largest city and near the epicenter. Just today she was able to send a message via Facebook that as nasty game seems appropriately described as terrific.
"This is total chaos - people have weapons they looted the houses are obscured. Last night our neighbors ... we fought and defended our home, this is horrible, no electricity, no water or food. Please pray during the night we must monitor the streets for the looters did not come into our homes. This is even worse than the earthquake or the tsunami - has been terrible. Depending on what happens today and if I can manage to go get gas Santiago with the children. "
only thing worse than appears to be a natural event of this scale is the rupture of human norms of society that make it worthy to be called civilization. How easy it is assumed that civilization has been achieved? But how easily we get bored or lose the fears that arise mounted on a survival instinct. What terrifies further loss of life or physical integrity is the sudden vision of people who yesterday passed comfortably in the street today are consumed by violence and cruelty that is not theirs and that does seem strange
not only to us, but themselves. The rage for survival seems to rise from a pre-hidden hunger of human life at any cost, a hunger so deep as the same abyss. The gap can not be blamed for anything out of it. It is within ourselves. The survival instinct can stifle our ability to deliver and compassion and bring all social relations and the needs of others
to oneself.
But our response to disasters is unpredictable. When, some years ago, the power supply crashed for several days in winter, in Quebec and parts of the coast, the Canadian government sent troops and called for reservations. Social chaos was expected, but never came. In Montreal, I knew of household heads who formed communities in the street sharing their supplies and taking care of the elderly and the sick. The soldiers sat down to wait for a disaster than the common humanity he said. There is, of course, that Canadians are better than the Chileans, and I'm sure we will hear of heroic and selfless acts that will outweigh the looters and vandals in Concepción. The point is not a national league table of virtue. We know of twelve years of Nazi barbarism, the Allied bombing of Dresden or a few decades later, the three-year siege of Sarajevo and Srebrenica
that the abyss can open anywhere, as unpredictable as natural disasters that we are so terrified. A human randomness makes the razor's edge seems sharper.
"Thanks, Maria Rosa wrote before your battery is over. "I've been here only because I can feel that" we are all united "in the sentence. I love you! ". Prayer for some it may seem merely a psychological support or a pair of crutches, when the crisis has wiped out all the security. But for others it is a real strength. It's not magic that can
readjust the plates of the earth or reverse the tsunami. Simply, a consciousness, permeated by faith "vision of things unseen." This awareness often becomes stronger in times of crisis in the days we live in the safety of our routine and our complexity and worldly tensions. The sentence means knowledge. In the worst of times we know that, despite the terror of isolation, belong to a divine order to the deepest abyss can not swallow. From this knowledge the word "love" comes unexpectedly. Expresses something that we can not find a better word and which is now filled with a sense that changes the meaning of everything else
.
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