Two days ago, Danwon high school students and families held a candlelight vigil for safe return of over 150 teenaged passengers of the sunken ferry Sewol in Ansan, South Korea. It appears about 45 souls were found alive and rescued. The rest of the young souls, in part because of choppy seas and strong currents, appear to be still in the waters.

Hearing the fathers of the teenaged children crying out, shouting in grief, begging the authorities to ‘return our children to us,’ that their children ‘should not be left lying in the cold water’… is beyond barely bearable to hear on the broadcast news.

We might never be able to imagine what life might be now and in the future for the captain, first and second and third in command, all who have been detained and the captain arrested, preliminarily charged for endangerment and in the captain’s case, abandonment of humans in need.

With this horrendous tragedy of such huge proportions, and the kidnapping last week of over 140 young girls by the terrorist Nigerian thugs calling themselves the Boko Haram [a/k/a Congregation of the People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad who have murdered over 10,000 people, including Christians, children, elders, pregnant women, Islamic moderates and reasoned leaders, and more] , and so much more hideousity going on in a world wherein some walking malignants want to be ‘right’ in their sick delusions, instead of loving, in tender fact…

Sometimes and often, we cannot turn the earth back on its axis as Superman once did to revive a soul he loved and had lost… but we can keep vigil in thought and ask that goodness come near to the suffering, that numbness descend upon them for a time so that they can get through what needs be done… until the heart can walk by itself again. That the will to live, remains intact, that all comfort each other in ways that are meaningful to each soul. That all are recovered, freed, flee, find their ways back to their people again.

Prayer is but thought, the energy of goodness of thought, aimed outward. It is not too much to say then, Let us pray. For those in such need. Asking for their needs to be seen and met. As a post-trauma specialist for 44 years, even though this is not science, it is reality: at every disaster site I have been to on mission, there are many ‘sudden angels’ who appear as though summoned by some silent clarion. Some are creatures, some are weathers, some are plants and trees, and some are, like many a soul here, in disguise of being merely human– accompanied by the Magnitude.

CODA
the image of candlelight ceremony is from another loss of our young; on 20th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests held in Hong Kong during which the CHinese government sent tanks and bullets against the unarmed young protesters and their sympathizers.