Palisades fire in Los Angeles, California (January 2025)
Photo credit: Jessica Christian
Pain and anguish attend all disasters. However, people react to them in different ways. Some may attribute such events to man’s folly and start pointing fingers at those they believe are responsible. Others may see them as a form of Divine retribution for man’s wrongdoings. The following are some thoughts to ponder in the wake of the wildfires that struck the Los Angeles area in early January 2025.
O Fortune, cruellest of heavenly powers,
Why make such game of this poor life of ours?
— Horace, The Satires, Epistles & Art of Poetry of Horace, translated by John Conington (1874)
The winds of heaven change suddenly; so do human fortunes.
— Chinese proverb
Heaven and Earth are impartial;
They regard All Things as straw dogs.
Evolved Individuals are impartial;
They regard all people as straw dogs.
— Lao Tzu, The Tao Te Ching, English version by R. L. Wing, 1986
Don’t you see something Divine in the turning of Hollywood into Gaza, can’t you? With all sympathy to those who’ve lost their lives and their property, can’t you see the irony in that Biden and the Democrats turned Gaza into a holocaust and then a holocaust struck the very heart of American soft power, burning out some of the biggest supporters of the Hiroshimasation of the poor Palestinian people in the Graza strip for whom no one is sheeding a tear amongst the powerful and the wealthy and the engaged in Western countries?
— George Galloway (British politican, broadcaster and writer), Mother of All Talk Shows on Youtube, 13 January 2025 episode ‘Californication’
Heat waves. Drought. Fires. Superstorms. Floods. Mudslides. These are the growing threats of a rapidly warming world, and scientists say nowhere is entirely protected from the effects of climate change.
— David Gelles and Austyn Gaffney, “‘We’re in a New Era’: How Climate Change Is Supercharging Disasters”, The New York Times, 10 January 2025
The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.
— Holy Bible, Psalm 103:6, English Standard Version (ESV)
Be sure We shall test you with something of fear and hunger some loss in goods or lives or the fruits (of your toil) but give glad tidings to those who patiently persevere.
— Qur’an (Sura Al Baqarah, verse 153, translation by Yusuf Ali)
READ MORE: 15 great quotes to read after Typhoon Haiyan
If we throw mother nature out the window, she comes back in the door with a pitchfork.
— Masanobu Fukuoka (Japanese farmer and philosopher), as quoted in “The One-Straw Revolution: Masanobu Fukuoka’s Simple Living Philosophy” by Shanna Lindinger, 3 January 2025
The truth is, we like to talk over our disasters, because they are ours; and others like to listen, because they are not theirs.
— Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Francesca Carrara (1834)
Be aware of the ephemeral nature of material things. Lose your attachment to them.
— Shui-ch’ing Tzu, from Cultivating Sillness, translated by Eva Wong (1992)
Let fortune empty her whole quiver on me.
I have a soul that, like an ample shield,
Can take in all, and verge enough for more.
— John Dryden, ‘Don Sebastian, King Of Portugal’ (1689)
In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was within me an invincible summer.”
— Albert Camus, ‘Return to Tipasa’, The Myth Of Sisyphus And Other Essays (translated from the French by Justin O’Brien, 1955)
~ Barista Uno
