*The Miraculous Rescue In The Rubble

Who was the mystery man who pulled a woman from a collapsed building? And: What can we conclude about the coming religious future from the Asbury Revival

A victim of 1981 Hyatt Regency walkway collapse in Kansas City (see video here)

(Remember, readers, Rod Dreher’s Diary issues that come out with an *asterisk in the subject line are those having to do with only religious and artistic topics not related to the culture war or politics. A reader tells me that Substack allows you to set up sub-newsletters within one’s subscription. If I can figure out how to turn it on, it might allow you who only want the “classic” posts, and not the culture war ones, to subscribe without having to filter out the stuff you don’t want. Please be patient — I’m working on it!)

I’m nearly done with the Greek Orthodox theologian Timothy Patitsas’s fantastic book The Ethics Of Beauty, which is really just a BIG collection of extended interviews with him about God, beauty, and the Christian life. The title is a bit dry, yet the book is anything but. I’ll be interviewing Tim (who reads this newsletter) for my re-enchantment book, and posting that here. With any luck, this book of mine will be a Gateway To Patitsas (and McGilchrist, and Kingsnorth, and Pageau, and Shaw, and so many other actual smart people, for whom I am just the publicist). There are so many brilliant, wonderful, spirit-filled thinkers, writers, artists, and others emerging now.

I was startled just now to come across in Tim’s book a mention of a miracle I knew about, but had forgotten: the saving of the Abbess Aemiliane from the rubble of the Hyatt walkway collapse in Kansas City,

In this 2013 podcast interview, the (now, sadly deceased) Kevin Allen interviews her about it. You really should hear it for yourself, but if you’d prefer to read a transcript, that’s here.

Abbess Aemeliane, in 2016

In 1981, before she was a nun, or even Orthodox, Aemiliane was present in the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City when two skywalks came crashing down, killing 114 people, and injuring about twice that many. It was such a horrible disaster that rescuers had to dismember bodies to try to rescue survivors. She tells Kevin Allen:

Mother Aemiliane: I was trapped. I was crushed. My knees broke my ribs. My face was on the floor between my knees. Nothing could move except my right hand from left to right, but not up and down. My consciousness was split into three, but apparently I never lost consciousness. We must have ducked from some reflex that never reached our conscious brain. And those realms of consciousness were, although I didn’t know the Orthodox conception of the human person at the time, but I experienced it—so there was the registering of impressions, the intake of sense data, my impression of my position, the unbearable—way past unbearable—pain, the inability to breathe.

Such things, that was one part, which was very, very distinctly divided from another part of my consciousness, which was of course my brain, which—brains are built to take in sense data and make sense of them. And impossible to make sense of all this overwhelming flood of unbearable data. And so my mind was thinking— I remember words in my head: “Did something happen? Did it happen now? Did it happen 20 minutes ago?”

Mr. Allen: So the brain was trying to catch up with what was really going on.

Mother Aemiliane: Yeah, just completely flittering around in confusion.

Mr. Allen: Trying to make sense of, organize the data.

Mother Aemiliane: Trying to organize, yes.

Mr. Allen: Do you remember experiencing fear?

Mother Aemiliane: No.

Mr. Allen: Really?

Mother Aemiliane: Well, not at that time. [Laughter] The worst was already happening. It was suffering.

Mr. Allen: So you were really there, experiencing, trying to make sense of it, but not so much fearful.

Mother Aemiliane: Oh, I didn’t have time! The little words going on in my brain were the least of my problems. I was just trying to— I didn’t even know that I was trying to breathe, that my body was trying to breathe.

And the third part of my consciousness, which was completely distinct from the other two, was the prayer, which was, I would say, coming from my chest, not from my head. And at that time, it was just the reference to God, the groaning to God; it was not words at that first moment. But I was very lucky that I experienced those divisions on the point of death.

Then I felt my sister grab my hand, my wrist, from the right hand—she was on the right; all the others were on the left—and pulling it. And then her hand slipped away without being able to move me, and light came in on the floor, the western gladsome light of evening. And so I knew that she was out and that she had tried to pull me out, and of course that she couldn’t.

At some point—because, as I say, there was no conception of time, no possibility to feel time—then this prayer became words, and the words were to my guardian angel: “Where are you? I thought you’d be around in a situation like this.” A prayer without faith, without even courtesy, but actually a prayer in me according to the fact that it was coming from my heart; it was not words in my head.

Mr. Allen: So you were pinned under all of the debris that fell? How much weight would have been on you at that time, as you’ve researched that now, looking many years back?

Mother Aemiliane: The skywalks were 50 tons.

Mr. Allen: My word. Any sense of how many of those tons would have fallen directly on you?

Mother Aemiliane: Well, they distributed over the lengths of the skywalks. I’m not an engineer or whatever, but one fell on the other, and both on us.

Mr. Allen: My, my. And just to clarify, your sister also had debris fall on her, but she was farther away so she wasn’t impacted the way others were, obviously?

Mother Aemiliane: The skywalks stuck on the wall to our right, slightly, creating a slight angle until a joint. From the joint onward, they were flat. So I was at a joint, and they were flat. She was to my right, where there was a slight angle. She was struck. Her back was broken in a compression fracture, but she did not require surgery. She had to be in the hospital flat for two weeks, and then they braced her and got her up slowly, and, yes, thank God.

Mr. Allen: And you also mentioned that she kept sending her friend, who became her husband, in to try to pull you out.

Mother Aemiliane: [Laughter] Yes.

Mr. Allen: Tell us a little bit about that and then how you finally are here today!

Mother Aemiliane: Well, I was not aware that he was pulling on basically what would have been my hips, bent at the hip, double, which was all he could see, and just maybe a foot under the beam. And so he would pull, but of course there was nothing that could be done. And so he would go back, and she would not accept it. And about the third time he turned back around, he had found her and picked her up and put her in a chair, and then come back. But he said that he saw me, that I was out.

Mr. Allen: So third time back to pull you out, which had been impossible physically before because of the debris and the weight on you and so on, suddenly he comes back and now sees you out of all this rubble.

Mother Aemiliane: Right. Yes, he did.

Mr. Allen: Did he see anybody pull you out?

Mother Aemiliane: No, he didn’t see anybody move or anything. He just turned around and saw me lying on my back on the floor, being held by somebody who, very soon after the accident, he could somehow remember the impression of a man who was there, holding me, but within about two years, he really could remember almost nothing.

Mr. Allen: Well, tell us about your impressions of who your savior was in the flesh.

Mother Aemiliane: I won’t tell you impressions. I will tell you exactly what happened. What happened was, when I called out to my guardian angel from under the rubble, then I felt my right hand taken as a handclasp, as in a handshake or a blessing, no—just a squeeze, no pulling, no movement, just squeezing my hand from the front, not from the side and wrist as my sister had tried from the side to pull me out.

And of course I didn’t know that there was nothing but rubble in front of me. And at the same instant—you could say the next instant? The same instant, I was out. I felt nothing; I felt no movement, no pain, no motion, just I was now lying on my back, staring up, and someone was holding me with his left arm over my back and with his right hand he was stroking my face and saying, “You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be all right. I love you, my darling.”

Mr. Allen: This was in English.

Mother Aemiliane: Yeah, yes.

Mr. Allen: My, my. And tell us about subsequent to that. So there’s a person whom we’ll talk a little bit about more—did you have any idea at this time, did you make any assumptions as to who this was, was it an emergency worker, or…?

Mother Aemiliane: No, no, I just knew that this person had saved me. I knew that he took my hand; I knew that he had gotten me out. My consciousness then unified, as I thought at that moment completely. With my great intelligence—Harvard, you know, and all that—I thought that he had taken my hand and swiveled out the top half of my body and I am now half in and half out, on my back. So I said to him, “Well, do you think you could get my legs out?” And he said, “Well, they’re out.” So as I’m lying there, being held, being supported, but on the floor, I look down the length of my body and saw myself lying on the floor with my skirt even in place as if I had lain down there and arranged it, my legs going down, my left foot at the floor turned sideways, inwards, with bones sticking out. And I was about maybe ten inches from the beam. I could see the beam, just maybe a foot off the floor. I could see under there my purse, which had fallen from my hand and marked the spot where I had been. And then I understood that I was out.

So he just continued the same, completely the same. And even though I then said a very stupid thing, I’m happy that I said it. He— I wanted something all down my back, and I could feel his arm, but I wanted something down the length of my back, corresponding to my spinal cord, my spine. And so I said to him, “Do you— Well, maybe if you got around behind me and put your legs on either side and held me up with your chest, it would be easier for you.” Just totally indirect and hypocritical and stupid, but also how was he in that position? How was he crouched there, holding me?

Anyway, he appeared to not even pay the slightest bit of attention and didn’t move, didn’t change, nothing. And I realized in that moment that he is taking care of me. I am not taking care of him. All the love and power and help was one way, was one way. And so I’m glad for this lesson.

Doctors said if she lived, she would probably never walk again. But Melanie (Aemeliane’s birth name, and the name she was called then) recovered completely in time. She kept trying to find the mystery man who had pulled her miraculously out of the rubble. She couldn’t understand what happened: that she had survived, that she was healed fully, and how on earth this mystery man had removed her from the rubble in that way. It was physically impossible.

She finally found him.

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