Thursday October 14, 2021
On Friday the 13th of October, 49 years ago yesterday, a plane crashed in the highest peaks of the Andes.
Thirteen people died instantly; five more died soon after of injuries and cold. Another eleven died when an avalanche buried the remains of the fuselage.
Everyone had injuries. Somehow, they worked together to clear enough debris for the most seriously injured to lie down.
They shared whatever food they had. But it soon ran out. Which led to a decision that later shocked the world.
“Of course there was food on the mountain,” author Nanda Parrado wrote later. “It was as near as the bodies of the dead lying outside the fuselage.”
Yes, cannibalism. The flesh of the already dead kept their friends alive for two more months.
The only thing that kept Parrado himself going was the sense that his father, his family, his friends, loved him. And he refused to quit loving them by giving up.
In the black and freezing night, Parrado sometimes talked with his friend Arturo, slung in a makeshift hammock to ease the agony of two broken legs.
“What good is God to us?” Parrado said. “If he loves us so much, why would have leave us here to suffer?”
“You’re angry at the God you were taught to believe in as a child,” Arturo answered. “This God is just a story. Religions try to capture God, but God is beyond religion. He didn’t abandon us, and He will not save us. God simply IS.”
Parrado and the others eventually decided that the only way to save themselves was to climb out over an 18,000-foot rock ridge, and down the other side.
They chose the two fittest of the 16 still alive. The two had no mountaineering experience. Or equipment. Even clothing. Parrado wore four pairs of jeans, three sweaters, four pairs of socks…
On the 60th day, they set out to climb that ridge.
Incredibly, they made it over the ridge, and down the far side. On the ninth night, they staggered down a valley to a river. Some Chilean peasant farmers saw them.
One of those farmers rode his horse for ten hours, to notify the authorities that the lost had been found. The dead were alive.
Later, Parrado wrote words that still speak to me about the kind of God I can believe in:
“In the years since that disaster, I often think of my friend Arturo and the conversations we had about God.
“To be honest, as hard as I prayed for a miracle in the Andes, I never felt the personal presence of God. I did feel something larger than myself, something in the mountains and the glaciers and the glowing sky … If this was God, it was not God as a being or a spirit or some omnipotent superhuman mind. It was simply a silence, a wholeness, an awe-inspiring simplicity.
“I feel this presence still. I have no interest in any God who can be understood, who speaks to us in one holy book or another, who answers one prayer and ignores another, who sends 16 young men home and leaves 29 others dead on a mountain.
“To be certain – about God, about anything – is impossible. Instead, I imagine love, an ocean of love, and I imagine myself merging with it. I am convinced that if there is something divine in the universe, the only way I will find it is through the love I feel for my family and my friends, and through the simple wonder of being alive.”
(Quotations from Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado)
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Copyright © 2021 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.
To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca
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YOUR TURN
I didn’t get much mail in response to last week’s column, recounting my experience visiting a Holiness congregation in Barbados, years ago.
Cliff Boldt picked up the line about having to speak your listeners’ language: “Haven’t heard it said better before by anyone. “
Isabel Gibson also had thoughts about that line: “Speaking someone else's language -- yes. Assuming we know their language, based on their externals -- not so much. It can be a tricky line to walk.
“As for the people living evangelical action, not speaking evangelism, I wonder if it would help all of us to hear how someone with another world view would articulate/describe what we're doing. We might be surprised. We might be pleasantly surprised. We might discover we agree on more things than we think -- we just name them differently.”
Steve Roney wondered, “Isn’t it odd that you would expect a talk on social justice to be a hard sell to a black congregation in Barbados? After all, ‘social justice’ is supposed to be largely for the benefit of blacks.
“Yet I think you were right to expect ‘social justice’ to be a hard sell to them. The poor in general are not in support of what is currently called ‘social justice.’ When left-wing sources criticize movements like Trumpism, the PPC, Brexit, or France’s National Rally, as ‘populist,’ they are acknowledging as much: the common people are largely or mostly not with the ‘social justice agenda,’ but in opposition to it.”
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Psalm paraphrase
Psalm 104 takes for granted that God physically created all things. That makes it hard to paraphrase with an evolutionary mindset.
1 The light draws me up towards itself.
It is bright, but not blinding;
warm, but it does not burn.
2 The light is friendly.
It reaches out its rays like a funnel
focused towards itself.
3 In its shining are all the colors of the earth,
all hues, all shades, all tints:
from yellow primula to scarlet tanager,
from anthracite to panther's eye.
4 It is all one.
No species can claim a special place;
no race has a corner on a personal color.
5 For you created them all, Lord.
6 The sea, the hills, the sky
7 rise up and fall down at your call.
8,9 All this is beyond my comprehension;
I can only affirm it, in awe and admiration.
1 Holy One, you are light.
You are the light of my life.
You can find paraphrases of most of the psalms in the Revised Common Lectionary in my book Everyday Psalmsavailable from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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A brief note about poetry. I send my poems out to a mailing list. The last two times I tried to send to that list, it rejected the message. Flat. So if you’re interested, please check my webpage .https://quixotic.ca/My-Poetry And If you’d like to receive notifications about new poems, write me at jimt@quixotic.ca, or subscribe yourself to the list by sending a blank email (no message) to poetry-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca (If it doesn’t work, please let me know.)
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PROMOTION STUFF
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. Some spam filters have blocked my posts because they’re suspicious of the web links.
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca He’s also relatively inexpensive!
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also has lots of beautiful photos. Especially of birds.
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)
ALVA WOOD’S ARCHIVE
I have acquired (don’t ask how) the complete archive of the late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures. I’ve put them on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. You’re welcome to browse. No charge. (Although maybe if I charged a fee, more people would find the archive worth visiting.)