When the World Breaks Your Heart

Spiritual Ways of Living With Tragedy

Clapper

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498273831
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

When United Airlines Flight 232 crashed in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1989, 112 people died, and 184 people survived. In this book Gregory S. Clapper, both a college professor and a chaplain in the National Guard, reflects on his ministry in the aftermath of this tragic event. Processing his chaplain experiences through the lens of his theological training, he reflects on six different resources from the Christian tradition that he saw transform people's lives during and after this tragedy.

CHAPTER ONE

THE MYSTERY OF TRAGEDY

On that hot July afternoon when United Airlines Flight 232 crashed, my family and I were driving into Sioux City from our home in Le Mars to see the movie Peter Pan. A nostalgic reverie about the television movie Peter Pan, with Mary Martin flying around the stage on wires we could see but chose to ignore, consumed me. The song “I Can Fly” was certainly a kind of theme song for youth, a celebration of the unfettered imagination and unlimited possibilities of childhood.

As we pulled into the Southern Hills Mall, I noticed a plane flying low heading for the nearby airport. Just as we pulled into a space in the mall parking lot, we saw a thick line of black smoke rise from the direction of the airport. As my family got out of the car, I sat in the car, put the key back in the ignition, and turned on the radio, awaiting word in case the worst imaginable thing had actually happened. Immediately the radio announcer said there was an unconfirmed report of a plane crash at the Sioux Gateway Airport.

As soon as I heard that, I felt a crushing sensation in my chest. It was as though that news report suddenly squeezed out of me the plans I had made for that afternoon—and for the rest of my life. Instead of celebrating a flight of imagination in a cool theater, I would face a blunt reality on a hot runway. Instead of relishing the limitless possibilities of youth, I would have to deal with the limited options that tragedy presents to us.

I started the car, told my family to get back in, and we drove the few minutes distance to the airport. Even with that short time between the crash and my arrival, already a long string of cars lined the shoulder of the interstate, the drivers curious to watch what was happening at the airport. When I got to the airport exit, a state trooper was waving everyone on, not allowing anyone to exit. I pulled over and showed him my identification indicating that I was a member of the Air National Guard. I told the officer, “I am a chaplain and need to be at the crash scene.” He said, “Mister, I don’t care. No one is getting off here.” I pulled off about a hundred feet past the exit from 1-29 and got out. I told my wife, Jody, that I would somehow get my own ride back home. As she drove off with our two daughters, I started running toward the entrance to the runway.

After my initial ministry with the injured and those still trapped in the wreckage—which I will speak more about later—I turned my attention to the uninjured survivors. Rescue workers carried these people from the runway to the headquarters building on our Air Guard base so that they would not clog up the hospitals and possibly prevent care from being given to the more seriously hurt. When I got to the headquarters building, survivors filled the dining hall. People sat everywhere, some on chairs, some on blankets. As I started circulating among the survivors, a worker directed me to two small children.

These two children, a brother and sister no more than six or eight years of age, had been traveling with their mother in the plane. Their mother now lay dead on the runway. The little girl, Rachel, and her brother, Peter (not their real names), sat quietly without emotion—no crying, no hysteria. They seemed subdued. I sat down to talk to them, and Rachel perked up a little when I noticed the teddy bear earring in one of her ears, and she gladly showed me both, obviously proud of these special gifts. I asked, “Is there anything I can do for you?” They said, “No.” Running out of all other alternatives, I asked if they needed to go to the bathroom and Peter said “Yes.” I took him down the hall to the men’s room. After relieving ourselves, we washed our hands in the same sink. I noticed that I had some blood on my hands, and it went down the drain with the dirt from Peter’s hands. We went back to the dining hall, and Peter rejoined his sister on the floor, in silence. Their shocked, silent numbness will forever be for me a symbol of our human response to mystery.

THE REALITY OF MYSTERY

The popular books and movies that go by the name “mystery” do not best exemplify true mystery. These “mysteries” are more like puzzles that will yield their answers to the clever. A true mystery, though, in the classical theological sense of that term, is not something that the clever person will solve before the dullard. A true mystery is one that will not yield to any explanation. There are some questions that will never receive satisfying answers. Such mysteries bring us to our knees, literally and spiritually. One of the reasons the classical understanding of mystery has become clouded is that there are many persons in academia—that place where we go to learn about life—who do not consciously recognize the reality of mysteries.

Academia, where I was spending my professional energy at the time of the crash, is not a place that breeds humility. Quite often, recipients of the Ph.D. degree see it as granting comprehensive authority, a kind of license for pride. It is, of course, possible for people to inhabit the “ivory tower” with integrity if they do not forget the mud and muck that they left behind them. All too often, though, competitiveness for good professional positions and the gamesmanship of applying for promotions and grant money, squeeze true mystery out of the picture. Academics tend to approach any subject as a problem that will yield its solution to just the right scholar armed with the proper credentials, a sabbatical, and research funding.

But whether or not academia wants to recognize it, all of humanity is in fact thrust into the middle of huge mysteries, and the mystery of tragedy is perhaps the deepest of them all. Tragedy comes into our lives in many ways, such as the death of a loved one, crippling and terminal diseases, rape, abuse, floods, hurricanes, fires, earthquakes, auto accidents, or plane crashes. The outward circumstances of tragedy can be widely different. All tragedies, however, have at least one thing in common. This element shared by all tragedies is a strong sense that such an event should not have happened.

In a tragedy, we think that somehow, somewhere, something went wrong, a mistake has been made. Whether it is on a microscopic level (as in cancer), a mechanical level (such as when a failing part causes a crash), a willful, human level (when criminal acts are deliberately undertaken), or on a cosmic level (such as when people are killed by a tornado), something has gone terribly wrong. If we call something a tragedy, we think it should not have happened.

When we finally confront the baffling depth and shocking darkness of true mystery, whether our initial reaction is wildly emotional or not, there is a part of all of us that goes numb, a part of us that stares into the abyss and comes away with pupils fixed and dilated. I saw this in the faces of Rachel and Peter, sitting alone among strangers and in the strong absence of their mother. Stunned. Silent. Covered from head to toe with a body stocking of thick emotional goose down, submerged up to the mouth in a vat of thick oil, able to breathe, but not much else.

True mystery shatters the illusion that we have total control over our lives. Things are not as we would have them be and there is no changing that. When we are in the midst of mystery, our mouths are stopped. We have to retreat to the childlike impotence that we were born into. We can behold, but we cannot comprehend.

The encounter with true mystery is not so much a new or radically intense kind of “experience” or “feeling”: it is more a lack of feeling or numbness. It is a kind of electroshock therapy where all of the previous signals transmitted by the brain through the nervous system become temporarily jumbled into meaningless static. To try to describe the static is useless, for what has happened is a disruption of the very signal-making process that is necessary to describe anything. All that you are aware of is numbness.

Such numbness does not leave easily. Some of it, perhaps, never goes away. After we find ourselves in a mystery, a part of us will always remember that unmistakable feeling of having a window open in our house that we cannot close, no matter how hard we try. For most of us at least, though, we do not remain forever in that stage of numbness. We start “coming to” and begin the frustrating but necessary task of finding our way around in the mystery that has engulfed us.

THE MYSTERY OF TRAGEDY

The particular mystery that those recovering from the plane crash had to deal with is the mystery of tragic death. Why did Rachel and Peter’s mother die while they survived? The question of why the plane crashed was not a mystery, but merely a problem to be solved by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and other agencies. In fact, the answer was quite clear: an engine part disintegrated and severed all of the plane’s hydraulic lines. Problem solved. But now the real mystery only looms larger: Why must we live in a world where such things can happen? Why do we live in a world where cancer takes the lives of children? Why do we live in a world where the high school dropout gets drunk and ends up crashing into and killing the class valedictorian? Why does a loving God allow such a world to be?

Why? The FAA, the whole government, even the pooled insight of religious professionals, no one can give an answer that takes away the pain. This is mystery, true mystery. There can be no solutions to mystery, only different ways of dealing with it. After the stunned silence—or after failing to fill up the infinite void of silence with hysteria—we begin to see something. We start to see that we at least have choices about how we describe these mysteries and how we respond to them. Life is, in fact, really a matter in which we “choose our mystery.”

CHOOSE YOUR MYSTERY

When mystery is discussed, some will scoff and turn away. These people, who often think of themselves as “hard-headed realists,” avoid religion because religion openly acknowledges—and even proclaims—mysteries, mysteries such as the mystery of the incarnation of God in Christ, the mystery of our salvation purchased by Jesus on the cross, and the mystery of evil. They prefer life “straight,” without any “nonsense” about mystery.

The problem with such folks is that they will not acknowledge the mysteries that they themselves live in. A completely secularized person might think that real “honest” life is nothing but seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, but they have often never considered the shape of the mystery of their own reality as they themselves describe it. For instance, “Why is pleasure so fleeting and pain so common? Why are some more able than others to achieve safety, satisfaction, and comfort? If the goal of life is to have a big weekend, why must we slog through the challenges of the work week first?” Since we cannot avoid all mystery, these questions lead to the reality of mystery. They lead us to two bottom-line questions of life: Which mystery will I call my own? How will I deal with it?

When we deal with the mystery of evil, suffering, and tragedy, there are three classic options which offer themselves to us. One option, the one taken by many Eastern religions, is to deny the ultimate reality of suffering, to say that it is an illusion. Most Westerners do not pay much regard to this option. The second option, sometimes cloaked under the name “existentialism,” looks at tragedy and says “that is all life is.” Those who choose this option adopt either a stoical attitude of courageously facing the apparent meaninglessness of life or else throw themselves into an attempt to forget their plight through work, substance addiction, or perhaps suicide. They have decided that either malevolent or totally indifferent forces guide life. The third option is that seen in the classical Christian understanding of life.

CHRISTIAN RESPONSES TO TRAGEDY

The believer, formed in the biblical faith, also experiences—and owns—the numbness and pain of the mystery as well. To pretend otherwise, to deny it, as some misguided Christians do, is nothing but sad folly, and such repression can lead to problems. But the believer, after acknowledging and naming this mystery, is lovingly and patiently called back to trusting that this mystery called life—with all of its emotional blind alleys and spiritual dead ends—is finally a gift, and that the gift is good.

The Christian who has read and understood the book of Job, the Christian who has read the passion narratives of Christ and has understood and embodied them, will know that the faithful one is no stranger to m...

Table of contents

• TITLE PAGE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• OVERVIEW
• CHAPTER ONE: THE MYSTERY OF TRAGEDY
• CHAPTER TWO: TEARS
• CHAPTER THREE: HUMILITY
• CHAPTER FOUR: GENTLENESS
• CHAPTER FIVE: HOPE
• CHAPTER SIX: THE PRESENCE OF GOD