Parachutes and Harnesses

This morning offers a stunning blue sky, steam rising from the formerly frosted roofs of sheds and other outbuildings in curling billowing clouds, a compelling stillness in the air, and perfect conditions for a whole array of flying. Within a short amount of time, the sailplanes will be turning in the thermals above the hills not far from here, and that most compelling of spring and summer sounds, small aircraft practicing in the distant sky. If conditions remain as they are into the evening, hot air balloons with begin their majestic ascensions, with the occasional roar of the burners audible from the ground.

This reminded me of a recent holiday that I enjoyed with my family. It was one of those adventure holidays where bicycles and walking shoes were more the order of the day than flip-flops and suncream. During my stay I chose to pour two hours of my life into an activity called 'High Ropes', where I was called to traverse beams many feet in the air, perform tricks whilst balanced sixty or seventy feet from the ground, climb vertical poles and balance at its top, throwing myself at a trapeze bar - just for fun! Now I should say that I was wearing a support harness throughout and no possible harm could come to me. The same for my gliding - I always wear a reserve parachute in the event of the catastrophic failure of the near-parachute I would already be dangling under. Pilots of planes and fixed-wing gliders will also have such things - fail-safes.

Oddly though, when standing on a round beam seventy feet in the air and then doing star-jumps on it; when gliding at two or three thousand feet over cliffs and rugged mountain tops - the fact of the failsafe is almost completely forgotten. Rationally, both activities should have next to no risk, but it doesn't feel that way. When we stand at the edge of something very high and look down, we feel unsafe, without need. It the top of a vertical pole, standing on a plate that was barely large enough to accommodate my feet, that was wobbling as wooden poles do, my heart beat fast and I felt afraid. I have felt unsafe while gliding.

There are times in our own lives when we feel completely unsupported, alone and vulnerable. We have all experienced those times to one extent or another. They are not nice, and we almost always feel unsafe. But like those who like to climb trees or glide through the air, there is never a time when we do what we do without the embrace of a harness, and without the 'failsafe' of a parachute or a guide-line. God is beside us always, in all that we do. How easy it is, in the adrenaline of the moment, or the terror, or the exuberance - to feel fearful, yet we need always to pause but a moment and remember that whatever we do we are never unsupported. At times we may find the support to be un-comfy or heavy, inadequate or excessive - but it is always there. The thing about all the supports in our lives, their presence is often gentle and more apt to be unnoticed, and so it goes. Perhaps that is how it has to be so that we feel free and not stifled, and that sensing fear or foreboding is simply part of the experiences of living this life.

Prevailing Winds

With any kind of flight, the stability and condition of the air around the aircraft (be that powered or free-flying) is an important factor in the duration, quality or indeed possibility of the flight.

As ever, it is a matter of reading the invisible by the effect that it has on the visible, in order to judge what may or may not happen.

An odd thing that pilots discover during the process of learning to fly gliders is that air speed and ground speed are not the same, and are in fact mutually exclusive. Simply put, if your air speed is 10 miles-per-hour directly into a wind of 10 mph, then your ground speed will be zero. Put another way, you may actually be flying very fast, but from the ground you are still.

The movement of the invisible forces of the air condition the flight to such an extent that we have to work with it in order to arrive at the place where we have to arrive. To try and land with the wind behind us would force us to the ground at near terminal speed, so we fly into the wind.

I was cycling into wind over the weekend just past, and this whole notion occured to me once again. I think that I have to regard the Spirit as the air in which I try to fly. I know there are times when I have seemed to the world that I am at a complete spiritual standstill (I may have even shared their view), when in fact, I was passing through the Spirit at speed. I think it is easy to become hooked on the achievement of ground-speed in prayer rather than air-speed. Temporal speed or spiritual speed?

Praying Deliberately

Those people who enjoy 'free-flight' (flight without motors) will tell you that to get the best of the experience, you have to fly actively. This may seem like a statement of the obvious, but it is quite possible, once airborn, to fly passively - to bimble along almost accidentally. Such flying has its place, though active flying increases enjoyment, augments satisfaction and is the safest way to fly. 

Scripture offered me an interesting word in the last few days: 'deliberately'. I was already pondering the similarities between flight and prayer, and into this pondering fell that word. As I think about it, I believe you can approach flight and prayer in different ways:

 - you can look up and marvel at the pilot above you engaging in the perpetual tension between lift and gravity, exploiting the loop-holes in the laws of physics that allow flight in the first place. You can look up and be dazzled by the razor-line of a supersonic Jet as it screams across your view. In the same way, in prayer you can look on and seek inspiration from the prayerful - those people who inspire us to draw closer to God by their very presence.

 - you can climb into a plane, or strap yourself to a pilot in a tandem flight, and achieve the unknown, visiting places in flight that you could never dream of alone and by your own efforts. Surely this is the same as trusting God, letting Him lead you where you may find new amazement and joy, a new view of the world!

 - you can strap into your harness or strive to be a pilot and fly yourself actively. This stage requires some influence of the other two, but in the end, you fly deliberately. Flight is not accidental, it is not a thing of pure chance - we choose to fly, and we choose to pray. To fly and to pray requires the pilot to compete against forces and influences that would seek to stop them. Being an attentive student of the art of flying and prayer will assure both of greater meaning and, dare I say it, success. 

We can approach prayer in different ways. Each has its rightful place, but in the end the only way we can get the very best from our prayer life is to do it deliberately - allowing time, seeking opportunities to train, practice, the odd gamble, in good weather and bad, and then finding the courage each time to launch into the unknown.