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EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 23 |
October 2000 |
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but missed the meaning |
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- T.S.
Eliot |
When Concorde crashed at Paris
Airport I was a long way from home and had also travelled by plane to my
destination. I bought an English newspaper and read the awful account of what
had happened. I genuinely felt an almost tearful emotion at the thought of
those men and women setting out with certainty of their destination. I was once
again confronted by the mystery of human suffering. The ‘why?’ that
could be written on millions of gravestones throughout history.
Why
people die so awfully, like little children who are abducted, abused and then
murdered, why so many people suffer from the ‘illness of meaning’
like addiction and depression, why whole nations can be wiped off the face of
the earth, why so many gifted people press the self-destruct button, why a
hundred and eighteen men should die at the bottom of the sea in a submarine,
presents an almost impossible problem of meaning.
The experience of
pain and suffering is an easy reality to understand, it’s all around us
and it’s in us but missing the meaning of it is so understandable. I
watched my mother die an extremely humiliating and distressing death - why? Her
life had been pretty blameless with God at the centre. Those last nine hours
could have broken the thin thread I have between myself and God, but it
didn’t - why? I can only give a rather unsatisfactory word about this in
the form of a short story:
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Peter
Abelard and his servant Thibault one evening heard the scream of a rabbit in a
trap. They went to investigate and Thibault said he’d seen the rabbits
playing by the river. He said “You know the way they go demented in the
evenings.” The cry came again. They found the trap with the rabbit in it
and Thibault held it open whilst Abelard gathered the little creature in his
hands whilst it died. It was the last confiding look that broke Abelard’s
heart. He looked down at the draggled body and said to Thibault “Do you
think there is a God at all?” Thibault was silent and then said “I
think God is in it too.” |
Was God on Concorde or in the
Russian submarine? I think so. But like Peter Abelard our hearts will be broken
by it like the spear in the side of Christ. But this is our starting point at
missing or not missing the meaning.
Father John Michael
Hanvey
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