This will be, with any luck, a survey of people's "narrow" escapes. Personally, I can remember several encounters where I was inches or milliseconds from probable instant death. Then I suppose, there are all the incidents I'm unaware of. But I sometimes have thought I must have a guardian of some kind (which I know is just a way to 'cope' with surviving). I can remember incidents when I was still quite young, that were close shaves, but death or serious injury missed by just enough. I haven't escaped unharmed, mind you, I have a busted foot from an old m/b accident, when I was knocked flying by some idiot who left the scene. And I'm nursing a broken shoulder, which was my latest brush with fate. It wasn't as close as some of them, but I could easily have left half my brains on the edge of the kerb, if my head had connected with it (missed, by about 2 feet). I could have been run over too (I was crossing a busy road at night, and the front tyre of the mountain-bike decided to go all frictionless on me, just as I was pedaling down with my right leg). A much closer call, happened once when I was driving a long way and fell asleep at the wheel. I'd only just got back on the road after stopping in a lay-by for a bit of a snooze (because I knew I was sleepy, and it isn't safe to just keep driving). So when I went off the road, and finally slowed and stopped after taking out several road signs (which I got fined for) I looked back and saw that I'd missed a stand of large trees by bugger-all, probably much less than a second. I would have been wearing the steering-column if I'd drifted off just a fraction earlier... There are several others I can still recall. (cue theme from Twilight Zone) So anyone else have any 'miraculous' escapes to report? Bear in mind, I'm not irrational enough to start believing it's any more than "dumb luck", whatever that might be, how about you?
I went in for a brain scan and died! They didn't know I was highly allergic to iodine and when I was injected with the dye that had iodine in it I went into shock then died for over 3 minutes. I awoke in the ER, thankfully I was being scanned in a hospital, with all sorts of tubes in me and doctors with paddles to get my heart going again. I saw no white light or anything when I died either to want to make me think there is a life after death.
what's the point of posting this in the religion sub forum? Sounds more of a free thoughts thing .....
Dunno. It sort of occurred to me that being alive is a kind of way to be thankful, for not being you know, dead. Religion is about a ritualisation of thanksgiving, among other things.
made me think of this Thanks By Yusef Komunyakaa Thanks for the tree between me & a sniper's bullet. I don't know what made the grass sway seconds before the Viet Cong raised his soundless rifle. Some voice always followed, telling me which foot to put down first. Thanks for deflecting the ricochet against that anarchy of dusk. I was back in San Francisco wrapped up in a woman's wild colors, causing some dark bird's love call to be shattered by daylight when my hands reached up & pulled a branch away from my face. Thanks for the vague white flower that pointed to the gleaming metal reflecting how it is to be broken like mist over the grass, as we played some deadly game for blind gods. What made me spot the monarch writhing on a single thread tied to a farmer's gate, holding the day together like an unfingered guitar string, is beyond me. Maybe the hills grew weary & leaned a little in the heat. Again, thanks for the dud hand grenade tossed at my feet outside Chu Lai. I'm still falling through its silence. I don't know why the intrepid sun touched the bayonet, but I know that something stood among those lost trees & moved only when I moved.
I've had three brushes with death, once when I tried to jump onto a train that was just pulling out, slipped and hung on, being dragged on the platform as I still tried to get in. Second time, during the Mumbai blasts, when we walked past an alley parallel to the one where cops were shooting at rioters, later I heard many people were shot by ricochets there. A third time, when I was looking the wrong way while crossing the street [Americans!!!!] and was pulled back just as a speeding car went over my toes.
Maybe the close calls are a kind of message, or at least we have to interpret something so we invent a reason. We learn to be thankful for the fact we're still here despite the world's propensity (and our own behaviour) to do us in. Or so we don't get too morbid about our chances of getting through any given day, we 'remember' just how precarious our situation is, so we don't 'forget' to thank something, maybe that's all any sense of 'religious connection', to the continually observed fact of existence, hangs on.
