Human beings have this way of looking at the world as if everything else did things like we do/would. We personify things. When bad things happen in the natural world, we often say things like "Mother Nature is angry," or "this is the Divine punishing us." And many of these emotional responses come from our ancestors, when we didn't understand how things worked and tried to come up with explanations for why these horrible things were happening. Having an angry god responsible gave people a feeling of agency. They simply had to make offerings and appease the god, and then these bad things wouldn't happen anymore.
It's a testament to the fear of the unknown that the idea that a powerful deity could just call up fire or wind or water and wipe out whole communities and that was less scary than the idea that these things 'just happened.'
Of course now we know the reason behind many of the disasters we face. It is a complicated dance of a ton of factors, but we can trace them back to naturally occurring variances and fluctuations. And yet we still like to attribute emotion to them, as if nature is 'getting back' at mankind for all of the things we have done.
And yet, most of the time nature is a true neutral. It doesn't act out of kindness or cruelty, simply out of survival. It does things that will make it more likely to survive..as a species, or a planet. While, of course, most individuals will act on their own instincts to try to live as long and well as possible, many natural phenomenon weed out the weak, or force different species to live together, to make the whole ecosystem work.
I think, for anyone who works with either nature or any deity that gets 'blamed' for natural disasters, it's sort of problematic, from our modern perspective, to attribute these disasters to spite or anger. I mean, I am all for people being responsible for their actions, and if you are constantly just tossing trash wherever or dumping toxic things, then yeah you might need to get smacked down...but I don't think a tornado is the right answer.
Firstly, disasters effect...everything. It's not just the mean, nasty people that are getting pushed back against, but also the people who recycle and do their best to live responsibly. It's also the children and babies, the pets and wildlife, the trees and plants. It's sort of egotistical to think that some people are SO bad that the deities just have to wipe out a whole town (and the surrounding area) just to teach them a lesson. And news flash, the people who needed that lesson won't be learning anything from a 'random' act of nature.
But secondly, portraying our deities as basically spoiled toddlers who just smite whole areas because they are having a fit is a really dangerous precedent. It is sending us back to days when we felt helpless in the hands of the divine, where we were just ants and they controlled everything...and that's not the relationship that most Pagans have with their deities. It's not a healthy one. Especially because in this model, you can do everything right, live a wonderful, kind, responsible life...and still get it all taken away in an instant....for no real reason.
Where I think we need to approach natural disasters is that they are agents of chaos and balance. Yes, sometimes stuff just happens, but when it does it creates change, and change creates growth. Natural disasters do wipe out whole areas, but they don't stay empty. New things move in and grow and flourish. And often the new stuff couldn't have grown there while the old stuff was there.
I think one of the reasons why we find disasters so challenging, as people, is that we have built so much up around our stuff. We have SO much stuff today that we define our lives by: our house, our car, our gadgets and trinkets. And when a disaster comes along and wipes it all away, we feel lost, we feel as if our very life has been swept away in the storm.
And the process of getting it all back feels impossible. There are precious things that can never be remade, that first art project, the ticket stub from a fabulous concert. And I'm definitely a stuff person, I love hoarding things that remind me of memories...but the important part are the memories! When we are faced with a disaster and a total loss type of situation, we need to ground ourselves in what we have.
We need to look for the opportunities for growth! Perhaps we had been considering moving..well this would be a perfect time for it! Maybe your house was full of furniture that worked, but wasn't quite what you wanted....now you can pick out stuff that fits you better! Yes, you won't have the pictures or memorabilia, but maybe you can contact friends and family and have them send you copies of pictures they had...it can become a whole memory sharing thing!
Nature will find a way, and sometimes we forget we are part of nature. When we get shoved, when we get backed into a corner...we will find a way to. It may not be your first choice, but it is always good to remember that the future is yet to be written, and that when everything gets wiped clean, you have the chance to make radical change, and to create something completely new!
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