Friday, September 02, 2005

The devastation

As the situation in New Orleans worsens I can only today ask you to do Tonglen (compassion) practice and Metta (lovingkindness) practice for the victims and rescue workers. The situation is simply beyond horrible and the suffering defies description.

Please do what you can to help. Right now, what most of us can do is donate blood and money to the Red Cross or other relief organizations. I also want to call your attention to Noah's Wish, an animal disaster relief agency. Yesterday I read the following quote from an AP article on one of the blogs I frequent:

Many people had dogs and they cannot take them on the bus. A police officer took one from a little boy, who cried until he vomited. "Snowball, snowball," he cried. The policeman told a reporter he didn't know what would happen to the dog.

I would do the same thing. I'm sure I would cry until I vomited if one of my animals were turned away. I simply do not think I could leave them.

How horrible for people to have managed to rescue their dogs for so many days only to have them turned away on the evacuation bus. And what is to happen to those animals that are just turned loose? Please give to Noah's Wish and/or PETA who are both engaged in animal relief efforts right now. PETA sent out a message yesterday saying that they had worked hard to give people instructions before Katrina hit on how to evacuate their animals. But there are many people who just abandoned their animals or whose animals were refused shelter or transportation. The suffering of both humans and animals is beyond anything we can imagine. But the animals don't understand what is happening. Please help.

If you want to give money to help humans, may I recommend Episcopal Relief and Development. They are launching a full scale, multi-state response to the disaster. You can earmark your donation for Hurricane Katrina relief.

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