"Time will
bring you answers."
People in the most extreme survival
situations often find beauty, even joy, in their plight. Thus, courage arises
from their contemplation of the majestic beauty of the world. They revel in the
magnificence of creation and have near religious experiences. Having found
manifestations of God in their midst, they go forward with renewed strength and
hope.
The Miracle of the Andes occurred when
a chartered plane carrying 45 people, mostly members of a Uruguayan rugby team,
crashed high in the Andes in 1972. They were stranded for 72 days. Only 16 survived. Having quickly run out of
food, they resorted to cannibalism, eating the flesh from the frozen
corpses of their friends and relatives.
Realizing that searchers had abandoned all hope they were alive and that they were all slowing dying, two of the
passengers, Roberto Canessa (above) and Nando Parrado, made a 10-day trek out of the
high mountains, before finally encountering shepherds who told authorities they were alive.
"Doors you never imagined"
"Doors you never imagined"
More than 30 years later,
documentary filmmakers flew some of the survivors back to the crash site. In the
resulting film "Stranded," Canessa sits with his daughter, looks at a
distant mountain, and says:
"Imagine the whole valley pure
white everywhere. I felt privileged to be here. No one else but me was able to
see this. I learned that when everything feels hopeless, if you wait a little,
sometimes in the walls that seem to offer no way out, doors you never imagined
may appear, if you know how to wait.
"When you're desperate and
don't know what to do and think you're going to die, just wait a little, and
time will bring you answers. That's what happened. The wind died. The moonlight
was beautiful. It was horribly cold, and I felt close to God. I don't feel it
now. Whoever made all of this, the Creator, was my friend."
After being rescued, Canessa completed his education and became a cardio-thoracic surgeon. (It was he who originally suggested to the other survivors that they use the bodies of the deceased to stay alive.)
"I clearly see..."
After being rescued, Canessa completed his education and became a cardio-thoracic surgeon. (It was he who originally suggested to the other survivors that they use the bodies of the deceased to stay alive.)
"I clearly see..."
Shipwrecked sailor Steve
Callahan had a similar epiphany while floating in the Atlantic Ocean. He had sailed
alone from Newport, Rhode Island, to England in a 21-foot sloop he built and
designed himself. On his return in 1981, he sailed from Cornwall to the Canary
Islands, heading for Antigua.
Seven days out, in a gale during the night, an unknown object (Callahan thought it was a whale) jabbed a hole in his boat. Watertight compartments kept it from sinking immediately. He scrambled into in six-person life raft that measured about six-feet across. Before his boat went down, he scavenged charts, a spear gun, and solar stills for generating fresh water. After 76 days, he had drifted across the ocean, and fisherman near the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe found him, thanks to the sea birds that hovered over his raft.
Seven days out, in a gale during the night, an unknown object (Callahan thought it was a whale) jabbed a hole in his boat. Watertight compartments kept it from sinking immediately. He scrambled into in six-person life raft that measured about six-feet across. Before his boat went down, he scavenged charts, a spear gun, and solar stills for generating fresh water. After 76 days, he had drifted across the ocean, and fisherman near the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe found him, thanks to the sea birds that hovered over his raft.
During the voyage he realized that
he had "a view of heaven from a seat in hell."
In his book
"Adrift," he wrote: "In these moments of peace, deprivation
seems a strange sort of gift. I find food in a couple hours of fishing each
day, and I seek shelter in a rubber tent. How unnecessarily complicated my past
life seemed.
"For the first time, I clearly see
a vast difference between human needs and human wants. Before this voyage, I
always had what I needed—food, shelter, clothing, and companionship—yet I was
often dissatisfied when I didn't get everything I wanted when people didn't
meet my expectations, when a goal was thwarted, or when I couldn't acquire some
material goody.
"My plight has given me a
strange kind of wealth, the most important kind. I value each moment that is
not spent in pain, desperation, hunger, third, or loneliness. Even here, there is
richness all around me. As I look out of the raft, I see God's face in the
smooth waves, His grace in the dorado's swim, feel His breath against my cheek
as it sweeps down from the sky. I see that all of creation is made in His
image."
MORAL: Be grateful for the
gift of life
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