"The Plague"

As reports of the mounting death toll, the incalculable suffering, and the ominous public health outlook all emanated from Southeast Asia this week, I realized, along with the rest of the world, that the tsunami was a catastrophe beyond imagining. Only the stories and the pictures, which conveyed a glimpse of the disaster that had hundreds of thousands of people in its grip, could make it real for me. It is, of course, all too real for those who suffer.

The rest of us feel a need to take in this great human tragedy, whether it affects us directly or not. Take it in because we are human too. Take it in and ask ourselves what to do with it, how to act, how to change ourselves accordingly. Our humanity - the thread that connects us to the victims - requires us to respond. It's not what I thought we would do this week. I had been thinking of the new year as a good time to revisit the optimistic message of our tradition, cheering us on to personal growth and self-improvement. As the week progressed and the suffering and loss increased, the idea of self-improvement became increasingly irrelevant.

The challenge before us now is how to extend ourselves in compassion to others. If that makes us better people, so be it; somehow that is not the point anymore. It is our help that others need.

Next I turned to my bookshelf for my copy of "The Plague." "The Plague" is Albert Camus's parable about how people respond to suffering and death. I hadn't read it for a while, but I was thinking there was something in it that would help us today.

The story takes place in a town on the Algerian coast, an ordinary place, according to Camus, with the usual array of villagers - the doctor, the priest, the bureaucrat, the stranger. The scourge of an epidemic forces them to reveal who they really are and why they do what they do. Many will die and those who survive will have to live with their grief. There is no one to blame. There is only the way each one decides how to respond.

Some try to leave town. Others give up hope. One, the priest, tries to explain what it means. And a few simply try to do whatever is needed.

Albert Camus was not a follower of religion. In "The Plague," the main character, the doctor, does not have much use for God. He has seen too much suffering for that. Rather he goes about his work as a kind of one-man resistance movement against the forces of nature.

When questioned about it, his answer is simple. "Since the order of the world is shaped by death," the doctor muses, "mightn't it be better for God if we refuse to believe in Him, and struggle with all our might against death, without raising our eyes towards the heaven where He sits in silence?" For Camus, there is dignity in the refusal to seek God's help, to strive instead to help each other. Our own actions are all we can control.

When a force of nature as powerful as the tsunami rises up and takes over a hundred and fifty thousand people with it, we may very well agree with Camus's doctor. Such events have nothing to do with a God any of us would choose to worship. Our response to such a tragedy is first to relieve suffering; only later, perhaps, to search for meaning.

I fell into conversation about the tsunami with a neighbor a couple of days ago. He's a thoughtful man and an honest one too. "I have to believe there's a reason why," he said. "I can't live with it any other way."

I imagine that in places of worship all over the world this weekend, people of faith are asking themselves why. Why now - why these victims? What larger purpose did God have in mind?

But I do not find myself asking those questions. Like our Universalist forebears, I cannot believe in a God who would purposely inflict such suffering on anyone. I cannot imagine the amount of malevolence it would take to induce a tragedy of such proportions. A cosmic amount, I would suppose. And perhaps that is why so many people turn to God at a time like this.

In "The Plague," the priest tries to explain why God would inflict an epidemic on his parish. He offers a series of sermons during a special week of prayer, proposing that the plague is really a test of their faith. God's love turns evil into good, the priest says; for the believer there is always salvation at the end. There is always a reason.

The doctor cannot accept this explanation. When someone asks him what he thinks of the priest's sermon, the doctor says it is the work of a man who has not come into contact with death. Any priest who knows suffering, the doctor says, would try to relieve it "before trying to point out its excellence."

The plague worsens. Everyone, including the priest, becomes all too familiar with death and that knowledge changes them. Some perform small but powerful acts of compassion. Others still keep searching for answers, or a way out.

The priest's later sermon, preached to a greatly diminished congregation, offers a greatly altered message. "We might try to explain the phenomenon of the plague," the priest says, "but, above all, [we] should learn what it [has] to teach us." There are no lessons in the death of a child, the priest admits, only the impenetrable will of God, which faith asks us to accept, not necessarily to understand. The priest's attempt at affirmation does not entirely succeed. His recently acquired familiarity with suffering - especially the suffering of children - has given him doubt.

While it might seem that religion should be able to explain tragedies such as epidemics, tsunamis, and the death of innocent children, Camus contends that religious explanations fail to comfort those who suffer. It is better to admit that there is no explanation and get on with the work that needs to be done. Compassion needs no justification. It only needs people to put it into action.

A natural event such as the tsunami has no meaning in and of itself. It has taught us some hard truths, however. One is that there is an economic injustice to blame for the vulnerability of the victims in places like Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India. We could - and should - see to it that all people everywhere have access to an early warning system. That is something we can do.

But there is nothing we can do about the forces of nature, which seem to be indifferent to our plight. "And then the wind, not thinking of you," Mary Oliver writes, "just passes by, touching the ant, the mosquito, the leaf, and you know what else!" We belong to the earth, but earth's cycles are much greater than we are. There is comfort and there is misery in that fact. This week there is only misery.

This week we may have unanswered questions about this great tragedy, but only one question will really make a difference to those who suffer. That question is, What can we give? Many are answering this question with their generosity.

It's a hopeful sign - and a positive truth - about human nature. Ordinary people like us know what to do. Our compassion tells us to give, any way we can.

We are all members of the same human family. The ocean looks different to us now too. We look to it and to the new year, not knowing what will come; knowing only what we have to give. It may be all we can know; that there is something we can do.

References used to prepare this sermon include "The Plague," written by Albert Camus in 1947. For further information on the UU response to the tsunami disaster go to www.uusc.org and www.uua.org.