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those miners...

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those miners...
mwishka
07/26/02 at 21:48:45
my friends,

there are sooooo many terrible things happening in the world right now today, so many lives being lost, so many families suffering, so many, so many....  

i feel a little selfish with my own special fear and terror, but i wonder if i could ask for prayers for those miners trapped in that cave-in in pennsylvania, and for their families?  (i can't even watch it, i can't stand it.  i might not even hear what happens until after...)  

my parents took us out of west virginia so none of us would ever see the darkness of a mine shaft, never ride that elevator down so deep deep into the ground.....    both of my parents had parents who swore THEIR children would never go to the mines, and they succeeded.  but a lot of my cousins eventually had to go, after having families and working two or three jobs and still not being able to support them...  it's the only good money available.  and a cave-in is a good death in the mines, you can only hope it will be swift and painless when/if it comes down there.  i've lost cousins, some of their deaths so gruesome i'd never describe them here.....


this is from a song, a mother singing to her child to explain that daddy's not coming home from the mine this morning......


daddy took his dinner bucket through the gates of heaven, the coal dust in his pockets.

he's working now for jesus. he's earning his pay with angel wings, cause god needed a
good man.

daddy took his dinner bucket through the gates of heaven...

mwishka :(

(hee heee miner-type folk figure work is good, and work in heaven will be even better.  fraid these aren't lounging about types..... ;))
07/27/02 at 02:01:56
mwishka
Re: those miners...
mwishka
07/26/02 at 22:13:45
um, you know what?  i was about to take that down, but instead i'll just ask my question, get these things clear, maybe...

that's not even sensible, or reasonable is it?  to ask for prayers for a whole town of, well, let's just call them disbelievers.....

i wasn't thinking of it that way, only about how it affected me personally.  i know many muslims have been doing a LOT of praying for me, but...well....he he maybe that's all just to do with the question of belief.....  hmmmm......  still not liking this us/them idea - never have....

mwishka (maybe not as unconfused as she thinks sometimes....)
Re: those miners...
siddiqui
07/26/02 at 22:55:50
[slm]
May Allah swt ease their suffering ,bring relief to them and their loved ones
and aslo give them the hidayath to accept Imaan ameen
[wlm]
Re: those miners...
Fatimah
07/26/02 at 23:00:30
[slm]
Dear mwishka,
When I read the news about those miners, my heart was very saddened. I really hope things will be ok. But please dont forget that Islam is a religion of peace, not one of hate.  :-*
Im not sure on this, but I think it is permissible to pray for anyone in the world..muslim or not. I make dua for my non muslim family all the time. I just know that we arent to ask forgivness for a disbeliever after he dies. Allahu Alim

Ameen to siddiqui's dua.
07/26/02 at 23:02:12
Fatimah
Re: those miners...
mwishka
07/26/02 at 23:15:33
bro siddiqui, sis fatimah,

thanks a lot...  oh no, i know what islam is meant to be and do, but some things about it, um well, let's just say i'm not into fear, punishment or division of humanity.....which may be why god and religion itself eluded me altogether......

i do appreciate your kindness.....

mwishka (who knows the saying and values the meaning:  there, but for the grace of god, go i.....)
Re: those miners...
siddiqui
07/27/02 at 00:16:14
[slm]
May Allah swt give you hidayath too sr Ameen :)
[wlm]
Re: those miners...
Traveler
07/27/02 at 00:28:33

  [slm]


   I can imagine how it must be on those miners and their families. It's just an awful thing. Insha'Allah they'll come out safe and sound.

   And I don't know where you got this idea about not making dua for disblievers. You can and you are suppose to make dua for everyone.
Remember Allah is a Merciful God, and His mercy reaches everyone regardless who it is.

  Traveler
07/27/02 at 00:29:32
Traveler
Re: those miners...
Fatimah
07/28/02 at 06:17:41
[slm]
I got great news for a little mouse…
Trapped US miners rescued
All nine miners trapped underground in a Pennsylvania coal mine for three days have been brought safely to the surface by rescue workers.
The men were lifted out of the mine to scenes of jubilation from rescuers and crowds gathered at the scene, about 55 miles (90 kilometres) south-east of Pittsburgh.
All the men were taken to local hospitals, where they were to remain for 24 hours and be reunited with their families.
Rescue workers, who had drilled for three days to get to the men, finally penetrated the chamber where the miners had been trapped in an air pocket at 2220 EDT on Saturday (0220 GMT Sunday).
Click here to see where the miners were trapped
A telephone wire was dropped through a small air pipe to listen for sounds, then a rescue worker heard the voices of the men who told him all nine were safe and well.
"What took you guys so long?" one miner asked.
Relief
Randy Fogel, the first miner to be winched from the shaft, emerged to a round of applause and cheering from rescuers.

The men were then brought up every 15 minutes; the fourth man managed a weary smile as he was helped out of the shaft while the last man to leave the mine gave the gathered crowd a thumbs up.
The families of the men, who had gathered in a nearby Red Cross Shelter, wept with relief at the news.
Rescue workers were ecstatic after days of desperation.
"It's just unbelievable," mine rescue worker Lou Lepley said.
"I have no words to describe it."
John Weir, president of the mining company where the men were employed, praised the miners for their bravery.
"They're the toughest people who walk the earth," he told French news agency AFP.
The state Governor, Mark Schweiker, had earlier made the announcement that the men were alive at a press conference to cheers from the attending crowd.
Tortuous wait
The dramatic news came after three tortuous days in which rescue workers battled to drill more than 235 feet (70 metres) below ground to reach the men, who were trapped in a water-logged chamber in freezing temperatures.

The men became trapped on Wednesday after accidentally drilling through the wall of a nearby disused mine which collapsed, sending 50 million gallons (189 million litres) of water into the shaft in which the men were digging for coal.
Emergency teams dug two escape shafts down towards where the men were trapped.
They began digging a back-up shaft after a huge drill bit jammed in the first shaft, but work on the second shaft was also beset by mechanical problems.
The drill bit was eventually dislodged, but it delayed the rescue operation by several crucial hours.
Emergency workers had also pumped compressed air into the chamber in the hope of enabling any survivors to breathe.
No communication of any kind had been received from the men since Thursday, and many had begun to fear the worst.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/americas/2156763.stm

Re: those miners...
mwishka
07/28/02 at 17:24:10
sis truthfinder,

thank you so much for seeing that and putting it here!  i can hardly believe it!!     ....he he before i could hardly see to write because i was feeling sad and scared, now i can hardly see to write because you brought to me the happiness of those miners and their families.  thank you for that -- i reaaaaallly didn't want to see it on the news.....

i think i should add this to my list of possible evidence that i've been accumulating - think that would be right to do?  think the efforts of however many extra people from here asking god to help those men either live or not suffer was what brought them out?  ALL nine, safe - having had a large enough air pocket for ALL of them?  i'm sure those families are certain that this is a miracle of god's work....they face this, god's care and possiblity of miraculous rescue, or death and loss, every time their loved ones make that long ride down....  (and many of them, like you all here, consider death to be nothing more than entry to heaven, so those with faith remain content each time they part from their precious family members who go to the mines.)

i don't really know how to judge whether that is a real effect or not, and there's no way to know - the air pocket would have already been there, with them in it, when i asked for your prayers....    what do i do with this information?  how do i process it?

mwishka

p.s. um sis truthfinder, i like your real name better..... hee heee          ...it's such a lovely name..
Re: those miners...
Fatimah
07/28/02 at 23:50:06
[slm]
[quote]i think i should add this to my list of possible evidence that i've been accumulating - think that would be right to do?[/quote]
[quote]i don't really know how to judge whether that is a real effect or not, and there's no way to know - the air pocket would have already been there, with them in it, when i asked for your prayers....    what do i do with this information?  how do i process it?[/quote]

sis mwishka, go ahead and add it to your evidences :) I'd say for sure this is from Allah. Maybe Allah is testing you on how you will process this..I mean, those miners being stuck down there really effected you..and you came here asking for us to ask Allah for them...so we did...and Allah brought them up, without even anything wrong with them! So now are you going to deny this favor or accept it? Allahu Alim.

Ps. I like my old name better too, but I just didnt want it all over the board ;). you can still call me Fatimah though.
07/29/02 at 00:56:25
Fatimah
Re: those miners...
eleanor
07/30/02 at 06:32:32
Salam mwishka,

I felt seriously compelled to answer this thread, even having just read your first post. I thought, what a paradoxical situation this is: here we have the house atheist, asking for prayers..

mwishka, your heart has already accepted that Allah is there. Don't you see that? You subconciously reached out and asked for help from the only source that you knew [i]could[/i] help.

And yes, the air pocket was there before we made dua; but what's to say that without dua, the water wouldn't  have continued to rise at such a pace that no pump in the world could have made an air pocket for those men? What's to say that without dua, the second drill bit wouldn't have broken; that they couldn't reach the men for over a week, by which stage they could possibly have succumbed to hypothermia?

I hope this incident is an example of divine intervention for you.

peace
eleanor
Re: those miners...
Kathy
07/30/02 at 08:45:52
[slm]

On this mornings news the men were telling us about how hungry they were and all of a sudden a lunch box came floating buy. The stuff inside was dry!

One of the reporters asked what was in it and he replied a ham sandwich. :(
However another miner immediately corrected him and said it was corned beef! :D

"Which of the favors of the Lord, will you deny?"
Re: those miners...
mwishka
07/30/02 at 12:01:21
sis eleanor,

well, i am nothing if not serious (serious endeavors, always.  silly style, usually.), and as i've said here a few times, if there's a god, i want to know about it, and was led here by the example of someone who made it seem almost obvious that there was.  this good friend told me to pray, even if i had no idea what i was doing or even really why - i believe the final version of this eloquence was "just pray.  it won't kill you." :D

so i've said here before that i've been praying, sometimes a lot.  and i still don't know what i'm doing, but i'm doing it anyway.  i certainly know the benefit of prayer towards healing sick people (very careful studies have been done of this) and it could easily be explained, to me, by creating coherence in the electromagnetic wave patterns emanating from the brains of those praying, and, as a person in science, it's obvious to me (as to you all god is obvious), that primary desire of living organisms is to create for themselves the lowest energy state in which their systems will work most harmoniously --- i caution you that this is NOT always the very LOWEST energy state, but the most highly, smoothly functioning lowest one, the one in which homeostasis is achieved, which is a smooth functioning with all necessary equilibria established -- a state which by definition is the opposite of a disease state.  (that's DIS---EASE.)

so, if someone tells me prayer helps ANYONE, and you all are experts at prayer, isn't it a logical choice to ask for your assistance??  i don't find that odd at all....  i'm not so good at it myself, so my efforts wouldn't be of much benefit to those poor people....

as for the question of god, i've had these little glimpses that i still can't be sure about, i try to realign myself with that state repeatedly, but i'm rarely successful.

my list of evidence is quite short, and it's a pretty strict list, and it's quite personal.  so that's why i was asking if this seemed like evidence - i WANTED to add it to my list, but i didn't want to do so rashly, just to please myself because i "liked it" or something like that...

sis kathy, how did this sandwich story come out?  could it be made up by someone who just wanted to tell a good tale?  i have to say that i was avoiding the news, so haven't heard it, but i will check on it....   in a time of real deep hunger, though, a morsel often only worsens the need --hmmm...i'm not sure one sandwich for nine hungry men who'd been working hard was a respite....but maybe it was a sign of hope to them, and that would be many degrees of magnitude of greater benefit to them than any single bite of food.....


mwishka

p.s. (later thoughts) my two kind sisters, eleanor and kathy, don't think for one second this little mouse is foolin around here with this god question...  i'm not trying to um pull YOUR tails (hee heee sis mice).  i'm just waitin to FEEL it for good, to be certain, to know that i haven't lost my grasp on it from one day to the next.  and just HOW you all do that, make that transition once and for all and then don't get bumped out of it because you doubt your own ability to assess things properly, i don't know and i haven't understood...  maybe it IS because i'm so immersed in thinking science constantly, observing the world constantly, trying to figure out everything and anything, including people, constantly --- the ONLY thing a person working in science knows is that they don't know anything for CERTAIN.   that's what science is, a constant struggle to understand.  it's sort of a quest, i guess, but it doesn't have a tangible goal -- the only goal is gaining knowledge and understanding.   but really, i suppose that could just be my whole obstacle -- i'm TRAINED to KNOW that i can never be certain of ANYTHING, can never accept anything at face value;  to understand that with any additional tiny piece of information or a sudden insight ANY hypothesis might have to be changed.  and it happens all the time, every day, in all fields of science.  change --- constant change and re-evaluation of previously accepted ideas.  so maybe i have to find a way to be de-trained....
07/30/02 at 19:49:42
mwishka
Re: those miners...
Fatimah
08/05/02 at 23:46:09
[slm]
Looks like all they went through paid off...May Allah guide us all to His straight path.

US miners sell their story

The nine Pennsylvania miners whose rescue gripped the United States and the world have sold their stories in a film and book deal worth $150,000 (£96,000) each.
Disney will make a TV movie of the miners' battle to survive during the three days that they were trapped, while sister publisher Hyperion will release a book of their stories.
The miners were inundated with more than 120 offers for their rights, their lawyer said.
Disney was also making a deal with one of the main rescuers who would be paid the same amount, taking the deal's total value to $1.5m, trade publication Variety reported.
Production work on the film would start immediately, Variety said.
The miners are also meeting President Bush, who is due to fly to Somerset, Pennsylvania, to meet them on Monday.
A White House spokeswoman said the President would praise the courage and strength of the miners and that they represented the US spirit - qualities that were also likely to make their story appeal to Disney.
They could be seen as an embodiment of the US traumas created by the 11 September attacks and economic uncertainties - but giving the rest of the country hope that it would also emerge unscathed, the White House spokeswoman said.
Ordeal
Millions of people across the US and the world were hooked by the race against time to rescue the group, who were trapped in a flooded shaft for 77 hours at the end of July.
The men huddled together for warmth and shared one corned beef sandwich from a packed lunch.
Because so much is known about the ordeal and rescue through news media, other TV and film companies could dramatise the story without paying those involved.
But Disney's ABC network will have access to the stories from the miners and rescuer themselves.
Re: those miners...
eleanor
08/06/02 at 00:33:59
oh God, here we go...

what's the betting that in the film they will stay warm by singing the Star Spangled Banner every morning; and that the President will come personally to hoist them out of the mine with his teeth....

::)

But it's sad that they have been exploited like that. They let their rights go for relatively very very little money. If just one of them had held out they could have gotten at least double that, if not half a million...  :(
08/06/02 at 00:35:40
eleanor
Re: those miners...
jannah
08/06/02 at 04:24:48
[slm]

well they're miners!! i doubt they get paid much more than they did in the 1800's ;)

the thing that bothers me about this is that those men went through such a harrowing ideal and their experience is being used to boost up president bush's public opinion polls. the frenzy of patriotism recently is making me sick. i feel like it's blinding the general public and creating a wave of nationalistic nazism. let's hope i'm wrong...
Re: those miners...
muqaddar
08/06/02 at 15:17:52
[slm]

pride comes before the fall ukhti ... and dang that meteorite is
sure gonna fall ...  


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