I've been so grateful for the evidence of God's Love, tenderness, mercy, compassion, unselfishness and generosity that this tsunami has brought out in people of all faiths (and none at all.) To me is is evidence of the way that we individually reflect the Divine through His qualities.
Mary Baker Eddy wrote in a piece she headed "Assistance in brotherhood":
God gives the lesser idea of Himself for a link to the
greater, and in return, the higher always protects the
lower. The rich in spirit help the poor in
one grand brotherhood, all having the same
Principle, or Father; and blessed is that man who seeth
his brother's need and supplieth it, seeking his own in
another's good. (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures p. 518)
I was sent this article below today and just wanted to share it with you all.
Love and peace,
Judy
Mosque works overtime to
take care of Hindu, Christian fisherfolk
By P I Rajive
The Indian Express, New Delhi
"http://tinyurl.com/5vwb2"
CUDDALORE, DECEMBER 29: Rahmatullah is a tired man. He and his nephew have just returned to their masjid after burying an unknown Christian man, identifiable by the black thread with the little cross around the neck. "They had not forgotten to put a makeshift bamboo cross on the burial mound."
He now needs to take the infant daughter of Shivakumar, both staying in
the masjid, to the doctor. ''Maaf karna, kaam bahut pada hai. Hamara
president Younus saab se baath keejiye,'' he says in Hindi, before going out.
In Cuddalore, the second hardest-hit town in Tamil Nadu when the killer
waves came, a masjid and the local jamaat have emerged as the rallying
point for thousands of fisherfolk-almost all of them Hindus and Christians.
There are hardly any Muslim fishermen in Cuddalore, and most of the local Muslims are either traders-which explains the Hindi-or have NRI sons in the Gulf. There have been no Muslim casualties.
''We came to know when people came running to the masjid, minutes after it happened. We decided to do what we could do,'' says Mohammed Younus, president of the United Islamic Jamaat. ''Isme kya badi baath hai?'' he asks.
The administration is grateful. Says District Collector Gagandeep Singh
Bedi: ''They have been doing wonderful work, I was with them the whole
last night.'' Once the relief and rescue work is over, Bedi plans to write
to the state government about their work.
Within minutes of the tsunami striking Pudukuppam, Samayarpettah,
Chinnoor and other little villages along the Cuddalore coast on Sunday morning, Younus had summoned his flock. Within half an hour, his men had left their shops and homes for the beaches in their goods vans, cars, two-wheelers and cycles, picking up and rushing the injured to hospitals.
By noon the Jamaat on its own had organised milk for a few hundred
babies, and food for over 3,000 survivors. By evening, about 3,000 Muslim men were tending to over 10,000 Hindus and Christians in makeshift camps in the local schools.
A few hundred of the survivors were invited to stay in the masjid,
where they still stay. Many more are in the Jamaat's school, and dozens
occupy its office building.
For the last three days, the Jamaat has employed 24 cooks working round the clock to feed about 9,000-odd survivors. Some in the relief camps and others in the five battered villages. The administration provides the rice and milk, and the Jamaat buys the vegetables and everything else on its own. There are about 20,000 men under the Jamaat, and the huge community kitchens that it had been using for its frequent community feasts were immediately turned into relief kitchens.
As the bodies began piling up, Younus asked his men not to hesitate.
And,for the last three days, they have been doing what might be unthinkable for many Muslims: carrying bodies on their own shoulders and cremating them.''To the possible extent, we have been making sure that the Hindu bodies a