More on Tsunamis and Moral Anthropology

Rodger Kamenetz, known for his work in Jewish-Buddhist dialogue, offers some thoughts on Rob's question in his essay, Was God in This Disaster?, linked here.  Among other things, Kamenetz observes:

"I don't believe that a mass disaster, in and of itself, tells us anything about God. I don't believe in a God who punishes through disaster. The disaster is. That is exactly the way I would understand it, without adding my own interpretation, without supplying a meaning or completing the sentence. The disaster is. The tragedy is. And I need to abide with it, and feel it, instead of seeking an answer, because the answers just make me complacent and take me away from the children on the beach, and the father with the dead child in his arms.
There is no God in the disaster.
I think there is God in the response, in the human hearts of those who are feeling and responding to this, the families and neighbors of the victims, and the rest of us, the bystanders, and us, too. The whole world is feeling it."

Susan