The Crash of Fight 1420

 Take up your cross

 “Take up your cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”—Matthew 16: 21-28.

 The Crash of Fight 1420

This was  Little Rock’s Democrat-Gazette headline over 25 years ago.

Wednesday, June 2, 1999.

All of Little Rock mourns the crash last night of American Flight 1420 from Dallas at the Little Rock airport. During a severe thunderstorm shortly before midnight Tuesday, the aircraft skids off the end of runway 4R, crashes into a bank of landing lights and a metal tower, and lands in a flood plain of the Arkansas River 15 feet below the runway. The steel poles act as a can opener, peeling back the plane’s thin shell on its left side. Fire engulfs the plane as fuel spills.

The captain and eight passengers have died so far.

Images of the disabled plane speak to the miracle of the 129 survivors, primarily Arkansans. Conversations in this capital city center around eyewitness accounts from survivors. One of the first and most haunting reports is by Little Rock native Carla Koen at the Children’s Hospital Burn Unit.   As she tries to escape from the burning plane through the hole in its side, she is caught on the jagged edges and trapped, hanging by one leg upside down.

Other passengers spill out over and on top of her, scrambling to get out. “They poured over me while I was hanging there, but no one stopped to help me,” she cries. “One angry, panicked man even screamed at me as I dangled upside down, ‘Move and get out of his way so I can get out of the wreckage.’ I’ll see his face for the rest of my life,” responds this survivor.

       When Carla Koen finally frees her leg and jumps to safety, she soon finds herself caring for two young girls, alone and terrified, in the adjacent hay field in the driving rain and hail. Erin and Cara Ashcraft, 13 and 10, are on the flight to visit their grandparents in Arkansas.

“I tried to talk to them about life and how we were alive, and that was the most important thing,” Koen says, adding that the girls also helped her. “They gave me something else to focus on.” She doesn’t allow the lack of consideration from others to become a “stumbling block,” a resentment that could keep her from reaching out to others.

 “Take up your cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

The chances of our ever being in a plane crash are 1 in 11 million. However, our chances are 1 in 10 of being caught in an addictive lifestyle, which often leads to a life that looks like an impending airline disaster, a life controlled by alcohol, work, drugs, or a person. There is no question that addictions become a cross to bear. Those caught in addiction often feel like Carla Koen, hanging by one leg, upside-down, dangling out of a burning airplane.

       There is more to this gospel than about cross-bearing and dying. Unfortunately, the disciples missed the message, and we often do as well. “And on the third day, you will be raised.” He is talking about resurrection. Those in 12-step groups know it as recovery, a new life. Resurrection and recovery are written throughout Flight 1420, especially in Carla Koen’s story.

 The message to those in addiction is that when we feel as if we are hanging by one leg upside down in a burning disaster, the message of 12-step groups is that we can get out of that burning plane, that old life, and find a completely new life waiting for us.

One of the secrets to a new life is that instead of harboring resentment towards situations and people from the past, we are called to reach out and serve others in similar situations, just as Carla Koen did. This is also called the Twelfth Step of Recovery. This is how healing occurs. This Recovery is also called Resurrection.

Years later, I met with Carla and thanked her for teaching us then and for continuing to teach us today about Resurrection. 

Linda S. Caillouet, “Fleeing survivors trod on entangled woman,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Thursday, June 3, 1999.

Joanna Seibert, “Flight 1420, A community of Survivors and Servants,” The Living Church, July 11, 1999.

Andrea Harter, “Surviving 1420,” a four-part series, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, January 23-26, 2000.

Andrea Harter, “Flight 1420 survivors to gather, crash memorial dedication today”, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Tuesday, June 1, 2004.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

X-Ray As Art

X-Ray as Art

Guest Writer: George Taylor

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In 2002, my “photography” took another unexpected turn when we acquired a digital fluoroscopy unit (a device that allows still and video x-ray images). We needed a moving target to simulate blood flowing in the arterial system, so we took two fish in a bowl and took an X-ray movie of them swimming around. The resulting image was a lovely translucent yin-yang pattern formed by the two circling fish.

I became fascinated by the potential of radiography as art and began to experiment. X-rays enable us to utilize highly sophisticated technology to create a photogram, one of the oldest and simplest methods of reproducing an image.

I began to image flowers on a whim. Whatever the underlying drive, one thing is for sure—I had an epiphany that day. When the first image appeared on the computer screen, I immediately recognized the haunting similarity between the plant and animal kingdoms. Radiographic images reveal in stunning detail the archetypal structures and patterns that are repeated with elegance and precision in every living organism, from the radial symmetry of the human brain to the unfurling splendor of a fiddlehead fern. 

I began a single-minded campaign to image just about everything that I could fit under the X-ray machine—from endless varieties and configurations of plants and flowers to seashells.

In a sense, I became obsessed with identifying and cataloging how structure, texture, color, and function move fluidly across boundaries, from plant to animal, from animate to inanimate—all with incredible grace, continuity, charm, and captivating beauty. Their inner structures, hidden in visible light, become their most noticeable features.

At times, these ordinary objects take on a new identity. A flower becomes a puff of smoke or an underwater creature swirling with its partners in an aquatic ballet. A sand dollar becomes an example of delicate lace, and an old handmade lace mantilla resembles the x-ray tracings of sub-atomic particles in a linear accelerator.

Finally, X-ray art has enabled me to utilize the same technology that I have used for 40 years to detect diseases in children and transform it into a means of revealing the inner beauty of nature.

To see more X-ray art, I invite you to visit my website <taylorimaging.net>, à browse à X-ray Art.

George Taylor, MD

Joanna joannaseibert.com

The Sea Is His

The Sea Is His
Venite

“Come, let us sing to the Lord;
let us shout for joy to the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come before God’s presence with thanksgiving;
and raise to the Lord a shout with psalms.
For the Lord is a great God;
you are great above all gods.
In your hand are the caverns of the earth;
and the heights of the hills are yours also.
The sea is yours, for you made it,
and your hands have molded the dry land.

Come, let us bow down and bend the knee,
and kneel before the Lord our Maker.
For you are our God,
and we are the people of your pasture, and the sheep of your hand.
O that today we would hearken to your voice!”—Psalm 95:1-7.

He hurries in late, with coffee in one hand and keys in another. “Sorry about being late. Trying to do too much, too much going on.” I light our candle as a prayer to the Holy Spirit to be present at our meeting. We sit in silence until his breathing becomes less labored.

“When I am so busy, my world becomes all about me. I do not feel God’s presence. I wish I knew how to slow down my life and better hear God working in my life,” he finally says.

I tell him I know exactly what he is talking about. But I let him know it could be different and told him this story.

On our last visit to the Gulf of Mexico, my husband and I rose early whenever possible, sitting on our balcony and waiting in the dark for the sun to rise. Usually, the sun creeps up, a little pink, a little lighter, and then with a massive crash of light like the cymbals and tympani at the conclusion of a symphony.

We become real beach bums for a few days, just sitting or looking out on the changing sea, waiting for the early morning fishermen: the osprey, the fishing boats, the surf fishermen with their accompanying blue heron, waiting for the catch of the day. Soon come the dolphins and the pelicans, swimming and flying and diving back and forth along the shoreline.

We take in a world more remarkable than that of our own making.

The Venite from Morning Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer speaks to what happens more than we can express.

Paul Tillich, the famous theologian who spent his lifetime trying to understand God, came and sat by the ocean for the first time and wept uncontrollably as he experienced the vastness of God in the sea—more than he had ever imagined. Sitting by a body of water and observing new life as it emerges each day from under and above the sea, marveling at such a vast world of wonder, can be more healing than drugs.

Is it possible to start the day or stop to sit by a body of water during the day? Then, for a half-hour, during lunch or after dinner, stop and allow the rhythm of life on the river, sea, or lake to heal you.

It may be more difficult for some to go to the sea unless we live by it. Instead, we can bring up memories of what it was like on our last trip. Perhaps we will also be encouraged to make more memories the next time we are there.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Joanna   https://www.joannaseibert.com/