tet
by EU Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection
Rev. Tet Gallardo, minister of the Bicutan UU Church in Manila (Philippines), reflects on the challenging process of healing, grappling with doubt, the relativity of certainty, and resiliency in the face of natural disaster. The following is excerpted from Rev. Gallardo's blog, The Spiritual Theorist.Today, the sound of howling winds too often heard in these parts tear through the glass windows sealed for comfort. Incorrigible. The deaths of 10,000 or so in one island during the last supertyphoon of this magnitude is still fresh in the collective memory of those in the 7,000 islands of this country that were spared. The winds don't lash or buffet, they crush any sliver of faith that God will spare us from danger. At least for me. How does one heal from a God wound? Barely a year has passed after Typhoon Haiyan, today we get Typhoon Ruby. At this time, although it has made landfall, the news we get is that our luck can be summed in the few lives snuffed this time. Barely a handful this time. But I sorely remember how 2 days after Haiyan hit, after we all prayed in our heart of hearts and our deepest faiths to our God, that damage caused by the typhoon was zero. Somehow, it magically disappeared. And this to my mind was how the nuns in my Catholic high school described one typhoon that magically split into weaker forces getting lost in a mountain range. How it was a miracle, nothing is impossible with God.