Fire From Ice

• 8 years ago

By DONALD DeMARCO

One of the most improbable ways of getting a fire started is by using ice. That’s right, using ice. No survivor’s manual would be complete without describing how this can be accomplished. First, one finds some clear ice and then shapes it into a disk that can be used as a lens. The lens serves as a magnifying glass that captures rays of sunlight which can be directed to dry leaves, kindling wood, or some other kind of tinder, and presto — a fire is started.

This method serves as an example of how resourcefulness can overcome a situation that seems utterly hopeless.

Inconvenience can be irritating. But inconvenience comes in degrees. On Saturday, January 23, 2016, dozens of buses were stranded on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The massive amount of snow that had fallen made it impossible for them to move. Here is inconvenience multiplied exponentially.

But it did not cause pro-lifers, who were trying to return home after they had participated in the annual March for Life, to despair. A group of Catholic students from Omaha and St. Paul-Minneapolis suggested that all the stranded pilgrims celebrate Mass. Even without a survivor’s manual, some of the pilgrims took things into their own hands and made a serviceable altar out of ice and snow.

Word spread throughout the stranded buses. One priest had 300 or so hosts. Six priests gathered themselves and concelebrated Mass for, in round numbers, 500 people.

Resourcefulness means knowing what to do when there seems to be nothing that one can do. The fire of the Holy Spirit no doubt emerged from the icy altar, illustrating once again, that hope can arrive when everything appears to be hopeless and that one can produce fire from ice, even theologically. Mary magnified the Lord, a more glorious magnification than the shaped ice that magnified the rays of the sun.

Resourcefulness is the virtue of the poor. Betty Smith, in her celebrated novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, describes the resourcefulness of the Nolan family that had to use considerable ingenuity just to scrape by.

It was amazing what the mother could do with stale bread! She would pour boiling water over a loaf, work it up into a paste, flavor it with salt, pepper, thyme, minced onion and an egg (if eggs were cheap), and bake it in the oven. When the concoction was good and brown, she would thicken it with flour and add two cups of boiling water, seasoning, and a dash of strong coffee. What was left over was sliced thin the next day and fried in hot bacon fat. It was not a meal fit for a king, but it did provide taste and nourishment.

Just because a door is closed does not mean that it is locked. As someone once said, “It is better to try and fail than to fail to try.” We can look to the humble bumble bee as an image of resourcefulness. Scientists have concluded that this wonder of God’s creation, from the standpoint of aerodynamics, cannot fly. Yet, in tune with its own inner resourcefulness and despite its ignorance of science, it flies nonetheless. God has supplied each one of His creatures with an inner capacity for resourcefulness that enables them to function and to flourish.

In the motion picture, Cast Away, Chuck Noland (played by Tom Hanks) is plunged into the Pacific Ocean when his plane goes down as a result of a violent storm. He manages to escape the plane and is saved by an inflatable life raft.

Thanks to his resourcefulness, he is able to survive on an uninhabited island. After a great deal of struggle and pain, he sets himself adrift on a raft of his own making and is finally picked up by a cargo ship. His ordeal and his return to civilization parallel our own struggles and our hope to return to God’s Kingdom. Chuck Noland is Everyman.

This main character of Cast Away emerges from his proving ground a better man. Prior to his plane flight, he was married to his schedule. He breaks up his Christmas with his beloved so that he can catch a plane. In checking his watch, he decides he has enough time — five minutes — to open his Christmas presents in the car on his way to the airport.

We are all castaways, cast away from our final destiny in this world of inconvenience and trouble. The stranded pro-lifers, though momentarily cast away from their homes, did not lose joy or hope. The Holy Family was cast away from the inn and Christ had to be brought into the world amidst cattle and straw.

Our affluent society offers us a convenient answer to every inconvenience we might experience. We have instant coffee, fast-food restaurants, automatic money machines, high-speed Internet, and an assortment of time-saving devices. Commercial advertising is constantly offering us new products that promise to make our lives easier.

Yet we must question whether these products stifle our resourcefulness, that inner compass that directs us to overcome inconveniences with ingenuity. We may also question whether a world of artificial inconvenience is robbing us of our patience and causing us to sleepwalk through life.

Hats off to the stranded pro-lifers whose resourcefulness has reminded us of our exiled condition and our need to be resourceful as well as hopeful and joyful! Their victory over ice and snow brings warmth to our hearts. We speak of natural resources. But the most natural, as well as the important of all resources, is the indefatigable human spirit.

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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That Is Going Mad; Ten Major Moral Mistakes and How They Are Destroying Society; and How to Flourish in a Fallen World, are available through Amazon.com.

(Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum. He is the 2015 Catholic Civil Rights League recipient of the prestigious Exner Award.)