The London helicopter crash site, where no meaning can be found | Giles Fraser

Commuters at Vauxhall station on the day of the crash. 'Right next to the crash site, everything feels confusing and disjunctive, unbearably random.' Photograph: Kerim Okten/EPA

One of the purposes of writing is to make things hang together, to construct a narrative that organises events and lends them some coherence. But lived experience is different.

I discovered the helicopter had flown into the crane in London on Twitter. That already feels weird, because had I been standing in my garden I would probably have heard it. I texted my brother-in-law, who is the vicar of the next-door parish where the crash occurred. He was dealing with a suicide. Some poor soul had jumped off a balcony. Next, my atheist mate Paul sends me a tweet about where my God is now and questioning the point of prayer. I reply that this is not the right time for that debate. He agrees.

I decide to go down to the scene. What practical assistance could I offer? None I expect, but I go anyway, and bump into a worried parishioner. Her son lives directly under the crane and he wasn't answering his phone. I promise to stick with her until she gets a reply. We walk as far as the cordoned-off area. Firefighters are queuing outside the Starbucks at Vauxhall bus station. A woman is unreasonably remonstrating with a patient policeman who wouldn't let her take her usual cycle route to work. Others are staring up into the sky and looking round at each other, all bemused.

Back at the church, prayers are being said for the dead, the injured and the emergency services. The empty roads, now closed, make this frantic commuter hub eerily silent. My friend's phone goes. It's her son. All is well with him. We find coffee in the wonderful oasis of Bonnington Square, one of London's hidden gems. We chat a bit. There is nothing much to do. What is there to do when there is nothing to do?

Later on, I take the tube up to the Guardian offices. Here, everyone is busy creating order out of disorder. It feels like a giant machine for the generation of narrative and meaning. How odd. Over in Vauxhall, right next to the crash site, everything feels confusing and disjunctive, unbearably random. In the newsroom, reporters are beginning to wrestle random events into a story. Commentators will then make further sense of it all. All this narrative order seems so out of kilter with the atmosphere down at the Vauxhall bus station.

It is often said critically of religion that it seeks to impose meaning on meaninglessness, that it is a sort of anxiety reduction strategy in the face of the general randomness of things. This is not the religion I know. What I see in church is a place that is remarkably accommodating to confusion and doubt. A place where people bring their not knowing what to do. They sit and light a candle or say a prayer, not fully understanding what this really means or expecting some instrumental purpose. "I don't believe in organised religion," people often say. That makes me laugh. All religion is intrinsically disorganised. Forever perched over chaos.

Some sense may come of all this. But not in a day. And not in a few weeks, either. Somewhere, I expect there are people with red eyes staring blankly at each other and taking in the unbelievable news that a loved one has been killed in so random a way. The narrative order offered by the reporters and columnists will probably not help them make deeper sense of Wednesday's events. And no, I am not implying that God is the ready-made answer. For me, God is the question. A question that will not leave me alone. Back here, the community gradually returns to life. Tesco in Vauxhall is open, but only a few people are out shopping. I finish the day with a prayer. In the midst of life, we are in death.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2013/jan/17/helicopter-crash-no-meaning-found

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