Resilience processes during cosmology episodes: lessons learned from the Haiti earthquake.

O'Grady, Kari A. ; Orton, James Douglas

The Haiti earthquake of January 2010 serves as an anchor for a new field of research on the role of spirituality in international large-scale catastrophes. Using the case study of one Haitian grandmother affected by the earthquake as a microcosmic representation of the Haitian people, we build an interdisciplinary theory of spirituality in extreme contexts. First, we identify 2 management theory concepts that we found useful: "cosmology episodes" and "sensemaking processes." Second, through a comparative case study--juxtaposing our findings from the Haiti earthquake of 2010 with Weick's (1993) findings from the Mann Gulch forest fire of 1949--we elaborate on 5 resilience processes that collectively constitute the anatomy of a cosmology episode: anticipating, sense-losing, improvising, sense-remaking, and renewing (or declining). Third, we initiate a more advanced conversation by reinterpreting literature from the psychology of religion and spirituality related to cosmology episodes, by focusing attention on the dynamics of spirituality-imbued transformative pivots within cosmology episodes, and by exploring the role of divine inspiration in cosmology episodes such as the Haiti earthquake. Finally, we call for more interdisciplinary collaboration (e.g., psychology, anthropology, sociology, management, political science, and theology) on the complex topic of the role of spirituality in resilience processes during international cosmology episodes.

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The 2010 Haiti earthquake left a devastating amount of damage in its wake: approximately 220,000 people dead; 300,000 injured; 105,000 houses destroyed; 4,000 schools damaged or destroyed; and over 1,500,000 people temporarily living in tents. Most deem this event a disaster not only because of the amount of destruction, but also because the destruction occurred in the least developed country in the Western hemisphere; thus, resources for recovery were sparse (O'Grady, Orton, Schreiber-Pan, & Wismick, 2013).

In July and August of 2010, our team of researchers went to Haiti to study the psycho-social-spiritual impacts of the disaster on survivors and to provide emotional and spiritual support services. One of the sites that we visited was a tent community primarily supported by a local faith community. The first day we arrived at the tent community in July of 2010, we were greeted by a psychiatrist who had been providing services since the earthquake. He asked me (O'Grady) if I would be willing to meet with a particularly concerning member of the community. For the past 6 months he had been providing counseling and antidepressants, yet she seldom emerged from her tent and cried nearly every day.

The woman shed tears as she showed me pictures of each of her children and grandchildren and lamented that they had all been killed in the earthquake. Through the aid of a trusted interpreter she stated,

   I have lost all of my children and grandchildren to the
   earthquake. I am a mother and a grandmother. That is
   my identity. Now what am I? It seems my only purpose
   now is to live a good life and wait to join them in the eternities
   when I die.

I carefully looked at and responded to each picture and, listening attentively to the older woman's story, I validated her experience of loss. I also acknowledged the value of her belief in an afterlife in keeping her alive. I asked her to share more about the role of her faith during this difficult time.

She explained that she felt that God loved her. She then despondently stated, "I believe he wants me to love and serve my family while on earth, but they are not here anymore." I reflected back to her, "Your belief that God loves you seems to bring you some comfort. You are also expressing a belief that he wants you to serve others and that this service has brought you joy in the past." I then offered a suggestion,

   You have experienced a great deal of loss. You seem to
   need a sense of purpose again. There are mothers in this
   tent community who are overwhelmed by the needs of
   their children. Would you consider braiding the little
   girls' hair in the mornings?

I recognized that this was not a simple request, for I was asking her to open her heart to others and directly confront the narrative that she was resistant to release.

Two weeks later, the team of researchers invited members of the community to a meeting to be led by one of the local survivors and helpers. The meeting was to be the first of many community meetings designed to affirm the collective fate of those relocated to the tent community and to instigate a barter system for meeting the needs of the community (O'Grady, 2013). The community members decided to tell jokes as part of the gathering. To everyone's surprise the grandmother took the microphone and told a joke. She was almost unrecognizable due to the improvement in her disposition and countenance. After the meeting, I commented on the change and asked her about the reasons for the transformation. The grandmother replied, "I have been taking care of the little ones in the community."

Disaster and Resilience in Haiti

Our encounter with the Haitian grandmother was one of many experiences we had 6 months after the 2010 earthquake. During our July-August trip, we conducted interviews, collected quantitative survey data, and spent time with the people of Haiti (O'Grady, Rollison, Hanna, Schreiber-Pan, & Ruiz, 2012). We returned with a larger research team in June of 2013 and conducted follow-up research. We have spent the past 5 years in an iterative process of analyzing quantitative and qualitative data from Haiti and other international populations, reading literature, meeting with experts, and exploring theoretical models (Orton & O'Grady, in press).

In this article, we will lean on management literature to help explain our participants' experiences of sensemaking including losing sense. We will also exploit management research for terminology that represents the processes involved in resilience and the cultural nuances necessary for international studies. Further, we will describe some of the resilience processes discovered in the Haiti interview studies by highlighting a case analyzed through a comparative case study of the earthquake in Haiti and a forest fire in Montana (Weick, 1993).

Psychological Theory and Disasters

The events of 9/11 reminded us that community disasters do happen and can impact a large portion of the population (Ai, Cascio, Santangelo, & Evans-Campbell, 2005; Silver, Holman, McIntosh, Poulin, & Gil-Rivas, 2002). Despite a series of large-scale catastrophes such as the 2001 terrorist attacks, the 2005 Hurricane Katrina, and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, researchers in the field of the psychology of religion and spirituality have been slow to adapt to the need for the new partnerships, new methodologies, and new theories to create better interventions that can reduce the long-term costs of catastrophic events (Walker & Aten, 2012). Two challenges currently impede the development of a better understanding of this topic.

The first challenge is a strong tendency towards the study of individual-level trauma. This is understandable given the psychology of religion and spirituality's current positioning within the much-larger discipline of psychology. Numerous psychological researchers have studied trauma at the individual level (e.g., sexual abuse survivors, breast cancer patients, survivors of childhood abuse) and its impacts (e.g., posttraumatic stress symptoms and posttraumatic growth) on people (Walker & Aten, 2012). The field of psychology, however, has invested less in learning about the impact of large scale, community-wide disasters. Some have suggested that scholars tend to shun the study of extreme or large-scale trauma because of the absurd nature of such traumas (Roux-Dufort, 2007). This lack of attention may also be due in part to psychology being a clinically oriented field in which clinicians may tend to assume that few, if any, of their clients will be survivors of disasters.

A second challenge faced by researchers interested in spirituality in disasters is the recurring bias toward the study of U.S. populations. The larger field of psychology has been predominantly a U.S. or western-focused field of study (Arnett, 2008). Similarly, less scholarly attention in the psychology of religion and spirituality has focused on disasters internationally than on disasters within the U.S. (Aten, O'Grady, Milstein, Boan, & Schruba, 2014). Perhaps it seems even less likely to clinicians that survivors of international disasters will step into their clinics than survivors of local disasters, so researchers focused on the psychology of religion and spirituality invest energies in local disasters rather than international disasters. However, the growing and pervasive influences of international crisis, including terrorism and the recent influx of refugees and immigrants, remind us it is at our door. Globalization is manifesting the limitations of U.S. boundaries and worldviews in the helping professions.

Management Theory and Disasters

As our research laboratory attempted to analyze the interview transcripts, we struggled to conceptualize what emerged from the transcripts and from our experiences of being with the people of Haiti. Like most researchers, we pored over the literature hoping to find concepts and constructs that represented what we were discovering in the field and in the lab. Although, many reputable scholars of psychology, including researchers within the narrower field of the psychology of religion and spirituality, have theorized about meaning-making and growth following trauma, none of their explanations completely captured what happened among our particular participants

The experiences of our participants could not be fully understood by bifurcating them into groups of those who made meaning and those who did not. Additionally, the way the participants described their struggles to make meaning included not only efforts to make sense of the experience but also the process of losing sense: losing sense of identity, losing sense of one's place in the universe, and losing sense of one's relationship with the sacred. Finally, our participants' experiences were uniquely Haitian. We determined that understanding resilience in international contexts required attention to processes (rather than just variance), sensitivity to spirituality, enhanced cultural consideration, and the use of diverse disciplinary lenses.

There has been a recent increase in the number of scholars and granting agencies calling for interdisciplinary investigations. Yet academics continue to resist the call in favor of a quest for expertise. Delving deeply into a discipline produces specialized expertise, but hunkering down in academic stovepipes minimizes the range of our questions and the complexity of our answers (O'Grady & York, 2012).

The field of management theory has devoted scholarly attention to crisis management and large scale disasters, including disasters in contexts outside of the United States, particularly among scholars of high reliability organizations (Roberts, 1990). Management theory complements psychology research because it has expertise in system dynamics and failures and sensitivity to international markets and organizations.

Sensemaking Processes in Cosmology Episodes

We found some of the management literature and terms to be useful in understanding and describing sensemaking processes in disasters. Two concepts that helped us understand the Haiti earthquake were sensemaking processes and cosmology episodes.

Sensemaking Processes

Management theorist Karl Weick (1988) was one of the early scholars to suggest that researchers should study sensemaking (rather than simply decision making) when seeking to understand and prevent disasters. In his seminal article on sensemaking, Weick (1993) explained that "sensemaking is an ongoing accomplishment that emerges from efforts to create order and make retrospective sense of what occurs.... Sensemaking emphasizes that people try to make things rationally accountable to others and themselves" (p. 633). His description is similar to psychology scholars' explanations of meaning making (Park, 2005).

An additional contribution of Weick's (1993) study of sensemaking is his observation that disasters can prompt a collapse of sensemaking, in which actors experience a sudden loss of meaning regarding their understanding of and place in the world. In an edited collection of professors' responses to 9/11, Orton (2002) referred to the collapse of meaning as sense-losing'. "We may have spent too much time studying sense-making ... and not enough time studying sense-losing" (p. 27). This is similar to Park's (2005) suggestion that when people's appraised meaning of an event is inconsistent with their global meaning, they experience "a highly uncomfortable state, involving a sense of loss of control, predictability, or comprehensibility of the world" (p. 710). Scholars in both fields seem to acknowledge a process of losing sense. We found management theorists' use of the term sense-losing to be a helpful concept in the interpretation of our Haiti data.

Cosmology Episodes

Weick (1985) borrowed the term cosmology from the field of philosophy, suggesting that a cosmology is the "ultimate macro-perspective directed at issues of time, space, change, and contingency" (pp. 51-52). A cosmology is an overarching view of the universe that defines such matters as identity, purpose, value, ideology, meaning, and transcendence (Orton & O'Grady, in press). Individuals, teams, organizations, communities, and nations have unique and shared cosmologies that implicitly guide the way people interpret and engage their world. Most people are not conscious of their cosmologies until they are confronted or disrupted (Weick, 1993).

Weick (1985) borrowed the term cosmology in an effort to explain the processes of sensemaking including the collapse of sense. He called this process a cosmology episode. We analyzed 164 references to the term "cosmology episode" published in the 30 years after Weick coined the term in 1985 (Orton & O'Grady, in press). Weick (1993) described cosmology episodes as follows:

   A cosmology episode occurs when people suddenly and
   deeply feel that the universe is no longer a rational, orderly
   system. What makes such an episode so shattering
   is that both the sense of what is occurring and the means
   to rebuild that sense collapse together. Stated more informally,
   a cosmology episode feels like vu jade-the opposite
   of deja vu "I've never been here before, I have no
   idea where I am, and I have no idea who can help me."
   (pp. 633-634)

The term cosmology episode reminds scholars to consider personal and collective cosmologies when designing studies, interpreting findings, and generating theories.

Psychological scholars have suggested that some of the general beliefs (or cosmology) that may be jolted by traumatic events includes the belief that people have control over their lives; moral people will not encounter bad events; the world is just; God is benevolent and mindful of people; and their imagined future will likely be realized (Janoff-Bulman, 1992; Park & Ai, 2006). We agree with Joseph and Linley (2005) who asserted that an adequate theory of trauma and its outcomes "must be able to explain this constellation of changes in meaning regarding the self, others, and the world" (p. 262). We appreciate the term cosmology episodes because it makes such changes more visible.

We wish to make it clear that the term cosmology episode is similar to, but not interchangeable with the terms disaster, crisis, or trauma. The terms disaster, crisis, and trauma are constructed and assigned by those encountering the event. In other words, "the crisis has no existence by itself, it exists through the way in which it is experienced by the individuals concerned. Consequently, a theory of crisis is above all a theory of experience and meaning" (Roux-Dufort, 2007, p. 110). Likewise, the term cosmology episode is a social construction and not an objective event. An event may be framed as a crisis, trauma, or disaster (as deemed as such by those encountering the event) but not necessarily trigger a cosmology episode. We define a cosmology episode as a process of sensemaking that is prompted when the cosmology has been sufficiently jolted, disrupted, or ruptured to trigger sense-losing and the subsequent need to remake sense.

Management theorist Mark Stein (2004) suggested that sensemaking processes are triggered when people determine that an event or experience is potentially dangerous, shocking, or incongruent, thus compelling them to situate the experience into some sort of sensible framework. When the cosmology does not adequately account for the event, people often experience a sense of collapse in aspects of their cosmology and a disruption of their functional routines. Some scholars have suggested that crisis can serve as a "brutal audit" of people and systems that reveals inadequacies in the cosmology, resources, and practices of the individual or systems prior to the triggering event (Lagadec, 1993, p. 54). Resilient individuals and systems leverage the audit to create more sustainable cosmologies and practices for the future.

The Anatomy of Cosmology Episodes

Our unit of analysis is not individuals, teams, organizations, communities, or nations. Instead, we are focused in this article on cosmology episodes as the unit of analysis. We find it helpful to invoke the term anatomy in referring to cosmology episodes because it triggers an association to five complementary resilience processes: anticipating, sense-losing, improvising, sense-remaking, and renewing. Figure 1 presents a map of these processes; however, we caution against interpreting the figure too literally. Graphic portrayals tend to oversimplify processes by depicting strict linearity, when in reality these processes overlap, cycle back on themselves, and morph based on evolving and contextual influences on the cosmology and the processes involved in cosmology episodes. The medical metaphor of anatomy helps us make the point that the five resilience processes are complementary, in the same way that circulatory, respiratory, digestive, neurological, and cognitive systems are complementary human systems.

Anticipating

A cosmology episode is the result of a triggering event confronting unstainable aspects of the cosmology; therefore, what exists in the cosmology and the resources that sustain the cosmology prior to the triggering event are necessarily part of a cosmology episode. The cosmology episode does not begin with the triggering event but rather with the anticipation of a cosmology episode because "the triggering event is only the most visible part of a destabilization process that started long before and that suddenly races out of control under the effect of a specific event" (Roux-Dufort, 2007, p. 111). From this vantage point, people and systems are always anticipating, responding to, and recovering from cosmology episodes. Management scholars emphasize that a study of cosmology episodes must include investigation of the beliefs, practices, and resources that existed prior to the triggering event (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015).

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Cosmologies are formed prior to, during, and after the triggering event and shape the trajectory of cosmology episodes. The personal and social resources, including physical infrastructures as well as beliefs and practices, are the context within which people make sense of a triggering event (Updegraff, Silver, & Holman, 2008). Cosmologies are shaped by historical imprinting, cultural geography, spiritual traditions, institutional positions, and personal strategies. Researchers who want to understand cosmology episodes quickly learn that it is impossible to do so without a thorough investigation of the cosmologies in place during the anticipation of a cosmology episode, before a catastrophe becomes visible.

Sense-Losing and Sense-Remaking

When the cognitive and behavioral structures people use for understanding and managing their lives disintegrate, people often find themselves in a state of "free fall," reeling to restore equilibrium. We describe this descent as sense-losing. Sense-losing is the process of relinquishing some of the global beliefs and practices that were previously relied upon to make sense of the world. The sense-losing process is distinct from both the anticipating process and the sense-remaking process. Sense-losing is evident when a person thinks, What I once knew, I no longer know. Sense-losing creates the need for sense-remaking. Others refer to sense-losing as a "collapse of sensemaking" (Weick, 1993), but our studies of cosmology episodes such as the Haiti earthquake have convinced us that sense-losing and sense-remaking are distinct processes under the larger sensemaking umbrella.

Similarly, Stein (2004)--who studied the sensemaking processes surrounding the Three Mile Island nuclear plant core meltdown and the Apollo 13 spacecraft malfunction--urged scholars to conduct more nuanced studies of sensemaking processes, pointing out that sensemaking does not always lead to positive outcomes:

If Three Mile Island is an example of sense-making hindering rather than helping survival, we need to inquire why this is so. Put differently, if sensemaking does not always increase the probability that a dependent variable (survival) will hold, it cannot truly be an independent variable. We need to explore whether a moderating variable influences whether accurate sensemaking will occur so that, in turn, the likelihood of survival will be influenced: a quest for such variables constitutes an important component of theory development. (p. 1252)

Stein's comparison of effective sensemaking in the Apollo 13 cosmology episode and of less effective sensemaking in the Three Mile Island cosmology episode shows the value of focusing on sense-losing and sense-remaking processes in combination.

Rigid sensemaking. In their study of those who have undergone a major life transformation as a result of adverse life events, Lancaster and Palframan (2009) found that,

Consequent to the threat to the ego, the person either attempts to hold on to their existing ego structure, in which case the threatening situation becomes prolonged, or they move into a more "open" state. This is highlighted through modes of coping that can either inhibit the person from change through avoidance coping, or, with acceptance, allow the process to continue to a transforming stage where action strategies begin to operate. (p. 264)

Openness to expanding, or otherwise altering, one's cosmology is requisite to resilient sense-losing and sense-remaking. However, such openness is not always easily obtained.

In comparing the Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown with the Apollo 13 space exploration near-catastrophe, Stein (2004) concluded that people's approach to managing anxiety, particularly during the "critical period" (p. 1244), mediated the effectiveness of sensemaking. The critical period aligns with sense-losing, and to people using avoidance coping (such as denial and over-reliance on heuristics and routines) tend to miss important cues and resources needed to prompt resilient sense-making processes. Cosmology episodes often instigate fear reactions that circumvent sophisticated evaluations and behaviors (Hobfoll, 1989; Park & Ai, 2006). Research on psychological threat indicates that people under duress are more likely to perceive unfamiliar stimuli consistent with their previously held "internal hypotheses" and are less likely to pay attention to peripheral cues (Staw, Sandelands, & Dutton, 1981).

If people are unable to reduce their fear and elevate their sense of options, they typically cling rigidly to their pre-event global views and practices, thus inhibiting them from seeking novel information and resources required for sensemaking (Slattery & Park, 2012; Staw et al., 1981). This is especially true when they do not believe they have adequate skills or resources to cope with the daunting work of sense-losing and sense-remaking.

Resilient sensemaking. People's perceptions of and approach to a cosmology episode shape its definition and trajectory. Those who employ resilient sense-losing tend to approach sense-losing with openness, calmness, realistic initial appraisals coupled with hopeful imaginings, loosely held assumptions, and continuous updating (Bray, 2010; Park, 2010; Prati & Pietrantoni, 2009). When people recognize the type of influence they can have on sensemaking processes, it can prompt them to enact a hopeful narrative of the cosmology episode, to courageously relinquish unsustainable aspects of the cosmology, and to adopt sustainable beliefs and attitudes (Bray, 2010; Pressley & Spinazzola, 2015). People who are open to their global beliefs being disconfirmed, and who are at least somewhat comfortable with doubt, tend to more willingly adopt a revised, sophisticated sensemaking framework than those with a rigid approach (Klaassen & McDonald, 2002; Werdel & Wicks, 2012). Resilient sense-losing prompts resilient sense-remaking in which people adjust aspects of their sense of their world, their sense of themselves, their sense of their relationships with others, and their sense of the sacred--a sense that has been made unsustainable by a catastrophic event. Resilient sense-remaking typically requires improvising and using available resources, beliefs, and practices to create a new way forward.

Improvising

Cosmology episodes compel people to review, update, and revamp old beliefs and practices to restore a sense of their world as meaningful and their place in it as worthwhile (Park, 2010). After spending the year after the 9/11 attacks studying resilient organizations, an author in the Harvard Business Review concluded, "Resilient people ... possess three characteristics: a staunch acceptance of reality; a deep belief, often buttressed by strongly held values, that life is meaningful; and an uncanny ability to improvise" (Coutu, 2002, p. 48). Management researchers have studied improvisation under the labels of change, learning, innovation, and bricolage.

Management theorist James G. March (1991) famously distinguished between two very different types of learning: exploitation learning, which takes advantage of knowledge already owned by the organization, and exploration learning, which takes advantage of surprises encountered by the organization. Similarly, Clayton Christensen (1997) studied innovation processes in a variety of industries and concluded that it is nearly impossible for an organization to introduce disruptive innovations to their own successful product lines internally, while upstart competitors are sometimes able to impose game-changing business model innovations on the industry from the outside.

Weick (1998)--who studied the mechanics of jazz musicians--found that change and innovation are poor descriptors of organizational transformation, whereas improvisation and bricolage are better descriptors because they depict the experience of creating something novel while it is occurring. Bricoleurs remain calm under pressure and are able to create order out of chaos. Referring to the metaphor of jazz, Weick states, "improvisation does not materialize out of thin air. Instead, it materializes around a simple melody that provides the pretext for real-time composing" (p. 546). Improvising is an intuitive process that draws upon and revises old meaning while incorporating the changing environment.

Our study of 164 cosmology episodes and our studies of the Haiti 2010 earthquake (O'Grady, Orton, Schreiber-Pan, & Wismick, 2013; Orton & O'Grady, in press) taught us that improvising is vital for transitioning from vicious downward cycles towards virtuous upward cycles (Wender, 1968). This is especially true when people do not discard and replace previous knowledge, but instead rely lightly upon previously learned models and routines while relying more heavily upon emergent data to enact in-the-moment meaning. When beliefs, practices, and resources are put in place before a triggering event, they can then be engaged in novel ways during the anticipation of a potential catastrophe in order to make sense of current situations, thus renewing the cosmology for the future.

Renewing (or Declining)

The final component of the anatomy of cosmology episodes presented in Figure 1 is renewing (or declining). It would be naive of us to state that all cosmology episodes are characterized by post-traumatic growth, improved capacity, and renewal. There are also vicious circles that end in permanent, unrecoverable failures. This openness to unhappy endings is represented in Figure 1 by the circle labeled "declining."

Most readers, though, will be energized by the possibility of renewal. In the same way that anticipating is a significant process before a catastrophe becomes apparent, renewing is a significant process after a catastrophe has ended. People who have survived a catastrophe often report that they are forever changed by the event. Some types of reported change include increased appreciation for life, more openness to new experiences, enhanced sense of efficacy, added wisdom, increased sense of altruism, and a stronger sense of purpose in life (Aten et al., 2014; Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004). Learning from catastrophes is an imprecise art, as the many satirical permutations of "lessons learned" shows (e.g., lessons encountered, lessons noted, and lessons mislearned). Definitions of resilience differ regarding whether systems that survive with degraded performance are resilient, whether systems that return to previous performance are resilient, or whether systems that improve performance are resilient. We capture these different definitions by including "renewing processes" as one of five resilience processes. We recognize that renewing processes can be ineffective (leading to decline), moderately effective (leading to recovery), or highly effective (leading to renewal).

Comparative Case Studies

As mentioned previously, the bulk of our theory development has been based on themes found in our quantitative and qualitative interview studies, at two points in time, and a qualitative meta-analysis of the term cosmology episode. We also found it useful, as a means for triangulating what we found in these studies, to compare a few individual cases from our time in Haiti with cases found in the management literature describing cosmology episodes. Management scholars have suggested that comparing cases can help create a more complete theoretical picture by highlighting patterns in cases and emphasizing complementary features of a phenomenon or process (Eisenhardt, 1991; Flyvbjerg, 2006).

For several reasons, we selected the Mann Gulch forest fire (Weick, 1993) as a case we could compare to the case of the Haitian grandmother introduced in the beginning of the article. The case of the Mann Gulch smokejumpers is the first case Weick used to introduce the term cosmology episode. Additionally, it highlights resilient sensemaking and rigid sensemaking. Furthermore, it describes processes of sense-losing. Finally, it addresses issues of identity within sense-losing, improvising, and sense-remaking.

The Smokejumpers in Mann Gulch

In Weick's (1993) seminal article on sensemaking, he reanalyzed a catastrophe experienced by smokejumpers in the Mann Gulch ridge of the mountains of Montana on August 5, 1949. Norman Maclean's (1992) book, Young Men and Fire, described the experience of 15 smokejumpers who were dropped into Mann Gulch (and one on-the-ground forest ranger) who tried to extinguish a forest fire ignited by a lightning strike on August 4, 1949. Only 3 of the 16 men survived the catastrophe that ensued. Weick (1993) reanalyzed the Mann Gulch disaster to illustrate features of sensemaking processes during cosmology episodes.

Rigid role identification. Prior to their drop, the smokejumpers were told by spotters that the fire at Mann Gulch was just another "10:00 fire." A 10:00 fire was an expression that was used to communicate that the fire was manageable enough that it would be out by 10:00 the next morning. Once they landed in the area, there were a number of cues that indicated that this was definitely not a 10:00 fire; however, the crew stubbornly held to the belief that it was a 10:00 fire, thus inhibiting their ability to see the evidence of danger that would have prompted a change in their course of action.

Much too late, the smokejumpers realized that they had misjudged the situation, and they attempted a course correction. The leader of the crew, Wag Dodge, recognized that they needed to flee from the fire. He called out to his crew to drop their tools to increase their agility and speed. Their tools, however, served as a marker of their identity. The dropping of the smokejumpers' tools threatened to strip them of their identity. 'If I am no longer a firefighter, then who am I? With the fire bearing down, the only possible answer becomes, 'An endangered person in a world where it is every man for himself'" (Weick, 1993, p. 236). The men refused to allow their identity to transform in any way. In the effort to preserve individual identity, they lost their team identity and the skills necessary to manage the situation. The men ceased to follow orders and fled in various directions. Those who no longer identified as part of a team and did not adjust their identity to accommodate the disorienting event were killed in the fire.

Resilient role identification and improvising.

Two of the smokejumpers survived because they assessed the situation accurately and reconfigured their sense of the team into a smaller dyadic social unit. The leader, Dodge, also survived the fire in part because he managed his fear and noticed cues signaling something out of the ordinary. A more sophisticated and adaptive analysis of the situation allowed Dodge to be flexible in his role as the leader of the team. He recognized that while he was still the leader, he was no longer leading firefighters in an effort to extinguish a fire, but was rather leading men away from impending death. Flexibly adjusting his role, he created space for an improvisational response to a crisis situation. Dodge built a fire circle, a procedure that was not part of training in the 1940's, and ordered the men to lie down in it. Unfortunately, the men did not trust his improvisation, and Dodge was the only one saved by his fire circle.

The Grandmother in Haiti

We now compare the Mann Gulch case to the case of the Haitian grandmother shared earlier in order to help illustrate some of the sensemaking processes and pathways involved in cosmology episodes.

Rigid role identification. When I (O'Grady) first encountered the Haitian grandmother, she could be described as being in the midst of a cosmology episode. She stated,

   I have lost all of my children and grandchildren to the
   earthquake. I am a mother and a grandmother. That is
   my identity. Now what am I? It seems my only purpose
   now is to wait to join them in the eternities when I die.

Not unlike the smokejumpers who refused to throw down their tools, this woman resisted an adjustment to her sense of identity and withdrew from her community. American firefighters in 1949 and a Haitian grandmother in 2010 all asked, "If I am no longer a [firefighter or grandmother], then who am I?" The Haitian grandmother held rigidly to the role of grandmother as defined by biological relationships. The pain was so severe and the terrain so unfamiliar, that she could see no way out other than death.

Cosmology episodes often instigate the need for people to reconsider their pre-episode identities, yet they often resist because such considerations can prompt deep existential crisis related to "important anchors about themselves" (Maitlis & Sonenshein, 2010, p. 22). As illustrated by the grandmother, "incomprehensible events tend to strip people of identity, leaving them no sensible narrative to enact.... generating] feelings like fear, meaninglessness, and disconnection" (Quinn & Worline, 2008, p. 501). The depression she experienced in the loss of her identity led to disengagement from her community. Severing people from their community can lead to spiritual and psychological decline and inhibit resilience factors needed to make sense of and respond to the crisis (O'Grady, 2012; Robinaugh et al., 2011).

Resilient role identification and improvising.

The Haitian grandmother saw herself as a mother and grandmother with a divinely endowed responsibility to care for her family members. Her cosmology included the belief in an afterlife. These beliefs had kept her alive but were not sufficient to help her thrive in her community. After being with the grandmother and hearing and validating her experience, I (O'Grady) proposed an improvisation of her previous understanding of her role by encouraging her to care for the children in the tent community. I did not try to discount her cosmology nor ask her to abandon it, but rather I encouraged her to adjust or expand her understanding of her identity as a grandmother to including being a care provider for those in her faith community. Her redefined sense of identity fostered community engagement and restored a sense of hope and purpose.

Summary of Cases

The initial experience of sense-losing can evoke the sensation that nothing in the world makes sense and nothing ever will again. The rise of fear can reduce people's ability to conduct accurate assessments of their current situations, which are necessary to escape from catastrophic conditions. The cases above demonstrate the intense fright and confusion that accompanies the loss of identity.

In the case of the Mann Gulch, 12 smokejumpers and one forest ranger could not reduce the fright sufficiently to move past their collapse of meaning, so that they could transition from men fighting fire to men fleeing fire. Their fear-induced denial may have cost them their lives. Similarly, the Haitian grandmother initially could not overcome her initial collapse of meaning sufficiently to adopt a new role in her world. Her rigid sense of identity temporarily compromised her sense of community and purpose.

On the other hand, Wag Dodge had sufficient courage to honestly appraise his situation and relinquish his previous conception of his role. This allowed him to flexibly adapt his role, which then prompted the improvisation that saved his life. In Haiti, 6 months after the earthquake, added resources helped the grandmother have sufficient courage to redefine her role. This allowed her to improvise her role as a caregiver, which then restored a sense of purpose within her community.

An honest appraisal during sense-losing typically reveals that some or many aspects of one's world have and will change. Resilience during cosmology episodes allows people to reconfigure their pre-episode cosmologies and resources as they re-make sense (sense of identity, sense of purpose, sense of direction, sense of relationship with others, and sense of relationship with God) after it has been lost.

Discussion: Spirituality, Transformative Pivots, and Inspiration

Although it could be argued that cosmology episodes are inherently spiritual--given our discussion of cosmology as a set of deeply held beliefs about one's place in the universe, and our discussion of cosmology episodes as a sudden and rapid loss of meaning followed by improvisation and a reconstruction of meaning--there is much more to be learned about spirituality's role in resilience processes during cosmology episodes.

We believe that scholars collaborating between the fields of psychology of religion and spirituality (PRS) and the management of spirituality and religion (MSR) could contribute important insights into resilient sensemaking in disasters. We believe such studies are a good fit for these scholars as some "might argue that spirituality would be, to some extent, shaped by the traumatic experience and constructed continuously through interactions between people, creating bonds of shared meanings in the process" (Jang & LaMendola, 2007, p. 308). Figure 2 portrays a conceptual map of cosmology episodes that includes the influence of what we refer to as "transformative pivots." The figure also lists just a few of many spiritual and religious constructs that could be explored within each process of cosmology episodes.

One of the unique contributions of studying disasters through the lens of cosmology episodes is that this focus encourages researchers to design studies that move beyond simple input-output investigations of S/R variables and towards studies that explore the intersection of various S/R constructs during resilience processes across contexts.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Using Figure 2 as a guide, we begin this discussion section with a set of observations about the role of spirituality in the Haiti earthquake, followed by a more focused discussion on transformative pivots in cosmology episodes, followed by an even more precise discussion of inspiration as a type of transformative pivot.

Spirituality in Cosmology Episodes

We found the management literature to be very useful in describing some of the culturally nuanced resilience processes described by our participants. However, we found the field less useful when it came to explaining the spiritual themes that emerged in our participants.

Fortunately, though, psychologists of religion and spirituality have much to contribute to our understanding of the role of spirituality during cosmology episodes. Specifically, the psychology of religion and spirituality clarifies the following five topics: (1) the role of spirituality as a support during awe-inspiring catastrophes; (2) the role of spirituality in the creation of resources before a triggering event occurs; (3) the role of spirituality as the core of collective cosmologies before, during, and after catastrophes; (4) the role of spirituality as a context that can lead to effective religious coping; and (5) the role of spirituality in the prevention of hopelessness through belief in a collaborative relationship with God.

First, we agree with other researchers who have asserted that spiritually is an inherent aspect of being human (Piedmont, 1999) and that, as such, spiritual meaning is fundamental in people's will to survive (Ai et al., 2005). The cosmology of a person typically defines the spiritual norms to which the event is compared and deemed a cosmology episode, proscribes the spiritual beliefs to be processed, and informs the spiritual behaviors for responding to such events. For example, a participant in our study shared that she was serving in an orphanage run primarily by Catholic nuns when the earthquake struck. She described feeling the earth shake and looking up to see several nuns standing in front of her dressed in white and poised in a posture of tranquility. She explained that for her, awareness of the event was couched in the serenity of the nuns, so she simultaneously experienced the event as chaotic and serene. She described the moment in which the earthquake hit as the most spiritual moment of her life. Her initial evaluation of the episode, shaped by the faith community, influenced her capacity to be a help agent in the hours and days that followed.

Second, spirituality and religion provide physical, psychological, social, and spiritual resources that are established prior to triggering events (i.e., when anticipating a cosmology episode) and both drawn upon and reconfigured during cosmology episodes. In their study of the 1993 massive flooding in the Midwestern United States, Smith, Pargament, Brant, and Oliver (2000) found that churches were turned into organizing centers for relief efforts and that religious practices, fellowship, and stories provided community belonging and strength for recovery. Similarly, the Haiti tent community was sustained by a faith community.

Third, spirituality and religion offer people a personal and collective belief system that "may uniquely equip individuals to respond to situations in which they come face-to-face with the limits of human power and control and are confronted with their vulnerability and finitude" (Smith, Pargament, Brant, & Oliver, 2000, p. 171). The belief that divine assistance is an accessible resource may be especially salient in resource-starved contexts. In addition, religious communities offer "a historically-based narrative that 'everybody knows'" and that informs individuals and systems about how to "act and react to their situation" (Jang & LaMendola, 2007, p. 308). In other words, religion and spirituality are at the heart of cosmology. In our studies of Haiti earthquake survivors, we recognized that our findings about spiritual constructs could only be accurately understood when interpreted within the collective cosmology of Haiti including the history that shaped it (O'Grady et al., 2012).

Fourth, spirituality and religion activate attributions and religious coping that can lead to effective improvisation. Smith et al. (2000) found a weak or non-existent relationship between self-reports of pre-triggering event religiosity and psychological outcomes. Religiosity prior to the flood contributed the most to psychological outcomes when it was moderated by religious coping and attributions of the 1993 flood in the U.S. being due to God's love or reward. These findings illustrate the interplay of the religious resources, beliefs, and practices (that exist during the process of anticipating), with religious attribution and coping (that are leveraged during sense-losing, improvising, and sense-remaking processes). The authors stated,

   When crises arise, a general religious orientation is translated
   into specific religious coping activities. In other
   words, an individual's religious orientation affects the
   choice of particular religious attributions and coping
   activities. Second ... a religious orientation may indirectly
   affect outcomes through religious attributions and religious
   coping activities. This may help to explain why
   specific religious coping variables often have stronger
   relationships with outcomes than dispositional religious
   variables. (p. 172)

Similarly, Gall (2000) found that an engaged relationship with God provided a sense of support that instigated positive appraisals and growth-oriented coping and meaning-making in breast cancer patients. Like Smith et al. (2000) and Gall (2000), we found that many of the survivors of the earthquake in Haiti who ascribed to the view that God was aware of them and was supporting them described a sense of self-efficacy that led to helping behaviors and posttraumatic growth.

Fifth, for some, a cosmology that espouses a collaborative relationship with God may serve as a buffer against the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness consistent with rigid sense-losing. This view of God within the cosmology may promote hopeful appraisals--due to a sense of efficacy that then leads to courageous sense-losing and prompts enactive coping that is requisite for creative improvising and resilient sense-remaking. This is consistent with management research on threat-rigidity cycles, which asserts that one of the ways to break out of a threat rigidity-cycle is to view the disaster as an opportunity (Staw et al., 1981). In Haiti, we found that when survivors attributed the disaster to God's love and reward (saving their lives), they tended to adopt sensemaking narratives in which their lives were preserved so that they could contribute towards the creation of a more resilient Haiti.

Our study of the Haiti earthquake was conceptually influenced both by the psychology of religion and spirituality and by management theory. As such, it shows how the establishment of a legitimate two-way research street between psychologists of religion and spirituality (PRS) and management theorists, especially management researchers focused on the topic of management, spirituality, and religion (MSR) can create new knowledge for both communities.

Transformative Pivots

Some scholars have reported a few cases in which a person was engaged in what might be described as rigid sense-losing (being stuck), before a powerful spiritual experience generated a transformative pivot that propelled this person towards resilient sense-remaking and renewal (Franks & Meteyard, 2007; Miller, 2004; O'Grady, 2011; O'Grady & Richards, 2011). Some who have experienced cosmology episodes report an experience in which the chaos of sense-losing is encountered by the cosmos of new insights and sensibilities.

According to traditional management and psychological theories, change processes happen incrementally and often predictably. However, change instigated by cosmology episodes can also be instantaneous, discrete, and surprising (Miller, 2004). Just as many people have described the triggering event of their cosmology episode as a distinctive ("watershed") moment in their lives, some people also have referenced their transition from sense-losing to sense-remaking as occurring at a specific time and space.

For example, William James (1902) studied those who had undergone significant life transformations. James noted that profound change was often precipitated by a state of fallenness (sense-losing). He noted that a "conversion" (transformative pivot) was most likely to occur when the person was receptive to sense re-making. On the other hand, he noted that for those in which their "conscious fields have a hard rind of a margin that resists incursions from beyond it, his conversion must be gradual if it occur" (p. 266). James explained that many of those who have reported mystical, transformative experiences indicated that such experiences jolted them out of their initially rigid, self-destructive reactions to triggering events.

Others have found that the most significant growth following large-scale disasters occurred in those who had the highest levels of pre-event mental illness. These authors speculated that this may be because those who had severe struggles during what we refer to as the process of anticipating were more likely to perceive a life-threatening event as a wake-up call (McMillen, Smith, & Fisher, 1997). This is similar to Lagadec's (1993) concept of brutal audits.

We have selected the term transformative pivot to describe this spiritually infused experience between sense-losing and sense re-making; transformative pivots can lead to dramatic improvisations. The word pivot can refer to the central or crucial variable on which a person turns or to the act of turning. The modifier transformative emphasizes that the pivot is a significant change process that ends one dynamic (e.g., a vicious cycle) and begins a new dynamic (e.g., a virtuous cycle).

Divine Inspiration

Many helping professionals and scientists have attributed innovative problem-solving strategies and scientific discoveries to guidance at opportune moments. Some scholars have described this as intuition, in which complexity is suddenly made clear (O'Grady & Richards, 2010, 2011), and which is consistent with the concepts of improvisation and bricolage.

Returning to our earlier case studies, it is possible to explain Wag Dodge's innovative improvisation of a counter fire (i.e., a fire circle) as being influenced by inspiration. Although Weick (1993) does not reference spirituality, he does say that it was unlikely that Dodge would have had any prior exposure to this technique for escape fires in 1949. Maclean did not have the opportunity to interview Dodge to ask him how he would explain his flash of insight, so we can only speculate about inspiration as an explanation. We also do not know if the Haitian grandmother would describe any aspect of her rapid transformation from isolation in a tent to participation in the community as a spiritually-imbued transformative pivot, because we failed to ask this question.

We did ask other survivors of the Haiti earthquake whether or not they felt that they had experienced divine inspiration during the earthquake. Of our participants, 82% agreed or strongly agreed that they had experienced God's inspiration just prior to, during, or shortly following the earthquake (O'Grady et al., 2012). One Haitian participant in our study described a transformative pivot during a prayer when he felt God encouraged him to go with his family to his spiritual community's temple. He said from that point his family catapulted from a downward spiral towards an enduring growth beyond their pre-episodic state.

In summary, reports from survivors in our Haiti studies as well as accounts of other cosmology episodes suggest (a) spirituality plays several roles in cosmology episodes; (b) resilient sense-losing fosters a space in which transformative pivots can occur; and (c) inspiration and related processes of improvisation, innovation, and intuition can arrest vicious circles and trigger virtuous circles leading to sense-remaking and renewal.

Conclusion

When our research team arrived at the relocated tent community (now a community of one- and two-room shelters) 3 years later, the first person to greet us was the Haitian grandmother. When asked about her life, she described improvements. She was running a small business and had "adopted" family members including a young woman with a small baby. Others in the community referred to her as "grandmother." Three years earlier, this woman had been diagnosed with complicated grief, seldom left her tent, and held the global view that her biological family was the only meaningful aspect of her life. She had adjusted her cosmology, adopted a flexible role identification, and improvised resources to enact a meaningful life.

Park and Ai (2006) have asserted, "Studying meaning making following traumatic events is both one of the most difficult and one of the most important tasks facing researchers" (p. 398). Having recently spent time on the ground in Haiti, China, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we can provide many data points to support the assertion that this type of research is difficult. We persist, though, because we see first-hand the valuable implications of these types of studies for theory, research, education, and practice. We believe that studying cosmology episodes could be useful for exploring meaning-making across cultures. Three academic disciplines--the sociology of religion; the field of management, spirituality, and religion; and the psychology of religion and spirituality--can find common ground in the study of international cosmology episodes. All three disciplines acknowledge the centrality of spirituality in the face of trauma:

Identities and social locations that speak to meaning making are among the most fully human aspects of their identities, and they are also among those most central to, most affected by, and most powerful in response to trauma in people's lives. (Brown, 2008, p. 228)

We invite our fellow scholars to step outside Western soil, beyond variance, and across disciplines to study this pertinent and complex area of human experience.

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Kari A. O'Grady and James Douglas Orton

Loyola University Maryland

Author Note: We want to express our gratitude to the doctoral students in the research lab of Loyola's Center for Trauma Studies and Resilience Leadership for their contributions to our theory building on resilience processes across international contexts. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kari A. O'Grady, Department of Pastoral Counseling, Loyola University Maryland, 8890 McGaw Road, Columbia MD 21045. Email: [email protected]

O'GRADY, KARI A. PhD. Address: Loyola University Maryland, Columbia Graduate Center, Department of Pastoral Counseling, 8890 McGraw Road, Columbia, MD 21045. Title: Assistant Professor of Pastoral Counseling; Director of Center for Trauma Studies and Resilience Leadership. Degrees: PhD (Counseling Psychology) Brigham Young University. Specializations: Resilience, psychological and spiritual integration in counseling, pastoral care, and community trauma.

ORTON, JAMES DOUGLAS. PhD. Address: Loyola University Maryland, Center for Trauma Studies and Resilience Leadership, 8890 McGraw Road, Suite 380N, Columbia, MD 21045. Title: Research Director. Degrees: PhD (Management and Organization) University of Michigan; MOB (Organizational Behavior) Brigham Young University. Specializations: high resilience organizations.