Thanks for the appreciation of my thoughts, Jerry...
A wee story, and truth in every word;
I was a miner [an engineer, but I was down there with the lads, and I proudly wear the "Miner" badge]. In the year 1950, in early September, at a coal pit called Knockshinnoch, one hundred and twenty-nine men were trapped underground by an inrush of peaty sludge from an undetected peat basin on the surface. The accident was caused thro' taking money-saving shortcuts by administration. [At the later inquiry, it was put down to "an act of God"---some "god", eh?] Every escape route from the pit was irretrievably blocked by the black porridge-like peat, and it seemed certain that every man was lost. I worked in the neighbouring colliery, and one of my mates, who had been around in the mines longer than me came up with the suggestion that perhaps an abandoned working in OUR mine came pretty close to the mine in which the men were trapped. This turned out to be the case; there was, according to old surveys, forty feet of strata between our mine and the area in which the men were trapped. So the rescue op. became focused on our mine. I could easily write a book about the days that followed. It was an unforgettable struggle. But to get to the point I wish to make; halfway down the long, dark slope of "Number six mine" [abandoned for coal working, kept open for dewatering purposes] there was a twelve-by-eight-inch steel beam spanning the width of the mine roof, bent and twisted by the relentless pressures of subsiding strata, dripping foul water and festooned with dank fungus. One girder among hundreds on the long trudge to the point at which the "rescue" was proposed. But different in one respect; some time in the distant past, when men went down here on their daily graft, some evangelical fella --probably a Baptist---had scrawled a message in ten-inch high letters along that beam, and it had stood the test of time, water and rust. "God is Love", it said. I wonder how many of the many hundreds who struggled and sweated down there that weekend looked at that chalk message quoting John the Baptist, and thought, like me, "Well, I sure can't put the finger on who got my mates into this shit, but there could be a hint as to who will get them out!"
We DID get them out, all but thirteen men who were caught in the initial flood of silt. I could have finished at the end of my comment in quotes, but have added the last two sentences knowing that some folks might want to know the outcome. Makes me wonder about the relevance of the Pope, Ian Paisley, and the Moderator of the Presbyterian Kirk....