Taking In The Scenery

Free-flight (that is, without an engine) is dependent on a number of things to make it possible - suitable air being chief among those things. Indeed, powered flight is affected by the same phenomena, but due to advances in powered-flight, their effects are less apparent. One of the great joys of gliding is that it demands a new sense, and that is to have a sense of the activities and behaviours of an invisible force - the air.

All glider-pilots want all air to go upwards. Why? Because it is the very thing that we need for our flight to go as we had planned, and is the means by which that flight is made longer and therefore more fulfilling. Upwards is what we want. Prayerful people also feel the same about the action of another very invisible force - the Spirit. We quite naturally want every prayerful encounter to be satisfying, as long as we choose it to be, and in every sense the answer to the prayer that we make.

Pilots of non-powered aircraft will know only too well that not all air goes up. It rotates, smashes against solid surfaces like breakers against rocks on our coast-lines. It whirls and swirls, and yes, it even goes upwards at times (as often as it goes downwards). Glider pilots cope with this by recognising how air reacts in given places. Behind a hill, air rotates turbulently - not for good flying. Above flat dry areas drenched in sunlight, the air invariable rises in thermals - wonderful flying. If the air hits a slope it rises like water would, and it is possible to surf that air like so many folks on a Cornish beach! Little techniques bring such considerable yield.

The same must be true for prayerful people. Little techniques work, are time tested. Taking in the scenery is perhaps the most valuable pre-requisite for a healthy flight, or a worthwhile moment of prayer or reflection. To do either blindly, without some 'flight-plan' would render the moment to luck and often to failure. As a pilot should, so should prayerful Christians stop and enjoy the view. After all, like any wind the Spirit can only be discerned in its effects on other things. Of course, if we are only ever passengers, then we can do all of the this with eyes closed - but where is the joy in that?

On Being Known

When anyone takes to the sky, there is a raft of papers and a plethora of documents that determine the fitness (in all senses) of the pilot in question to be more than a few feet off the ground. The simple fact is that every human being in the air, and in control of an aircraft (powered or otherwise) is fairly comprehensively known to the regulatory authorities. There is no real way of avoiding that, and for good reason.

We find ourselves, at the moment,  in the wonderful and hopeful season of Epiphany. The season of 'revealing' gives us a chance to unwrap afresh the perfect gift of Jesus in our midst. It also grants us another chance to unwrap ourselves and discover the 'us' that God knew before we were born (cf. Ps 139). I believe that the person that God knows, as distinct from one we think we know, ourselves, takes a lifetime to get to know.

I am blessed with twin daughters who, perhaps unsurprisingly, look very much alike - except to their mother and I. To us, they couldn't be more dissimilar - not because we have especially good attentions to detail - but because we 'know them' so much better than anyone else. Few people can tell them apart, as you would expect. Those people are good, kind, and caring people - it is just that they are not blessed to know as we know. If that difference can be so marked in humans, imagine what we must really look like to God who knew us even before our mothers?

Up and Downs

I was sat in a plane last week and watched rapt at the information that was placed before us: flight time, altitude, temperature, and so on - I confess that a world formed by numbers in flux appeals to me. However, I was reminded of a flight I once took in America - a short hop. The plane took off, reached a given height and then immediately began to lose height until it found the runway.

To me that seemed pointless. Gaining height, maintaining a cruising altitude and then gliding back down when on the landing approach - now that makes sense to me. Imagine a flight path like Table Mountain in South Africa, as opposed to one of those pointy mountains that our kids draw for us with zigzag snow just below the summit! Why climb to a height only to come down from it immediately?!

I don't doubt that there are clear reasons for doing that - fuel economy maybe, but I wondered if this is not a pattern of flight that we adopt in our own lifetimes: we are born and we gain altitude through education, qualification and/or promotion until we run out of time and dive down to the 'landing'. I have seen lives lived like that - without any plateaus, without any cruising height.

It seems to me that a life without cruising height is a life constructed only of hopes followed endings - but without the enjoyment of the fruits of those hopes and dreams somewhere in the middle. Maybe that is what is wrong with modern living - we are all so focussed on status and excelling that in the event we reach that lofty heights that we seek, we have not a moment to enjoy the ride or its views before our mortality causes us to make our landing approach.

Baggage

I have just journeyed to Jerusalem, and for a period of a couple of weeks. Such a journey required of me two conscious thoughts: how long and why. These questions attracted their answers and those answers then informed what I took with me on that journey - both in terms of specifics and in terms of volume.

To me, prayer is a journey before and with God. It seemed clear to me, as I toiled across an airport concourse with a large suitcase that I had just that which I needed - perhaps an obvious statement, but one that nonetheless should not be ignored. Had I travelled for a weekend, I would have taken a small pack. Had I travelled for a gliding holiday, I would have carried with me things quite distinct from the clothing and materials that I had packed for this journey.

I have pondered this over the last little while in regards to my own prayer life. Whilst I can only ever speak for myself, I now recognise that in prayer I take with me into that encounter with God what I think I need, and mindful of the time-frame in question. This is to say, I am try to be purposeful in prayer - be that the purpose of pondering, of supplication etc. What I am now conscious of is not to turn up for a 'weekend' prayer packed for a month, and not for a study tour with my gliding paraphernalia.

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?

Making a Difference

Sometime last month, before the grey cloud descended over my summer, I was looking up at the sky and noticed how many 'con trails' there were. 'Con trails' are those white lines in the skies that mark out the flight path of a plane, caused by the moisture being forced out of the air by the effect of the wing. The fact is, a wing changes the air it passes through, almost always invisibly. It is that change that grants lift but if were granted a view of the air before and after the wing, we would see two very different images.
I was given cause to think of an old cleric that I know and love, the bishop who confirmed me in 1983. His gentle personality, razor sharp wit and authentic prayerfulness changed everyone among whom he passed. I would go so far as to say that the man to whom I refer is the most Christ-like human I have ever met, and he too left a mark of change behind him. His 'con-trail' didn't vanish after mere moments, but rather became indelible.
It is in my heart to try and be like that man, to make a difference to the air through which I pass. I am not sure how it is done, but for a man or woman of Christ, it can only be done by utter authenticity of self.

Where the danger lies

It is a truism in free-flight communities that the greatest danger to a pilot is when they are nearest to the ground. This may either sound like a statement of the obvious or the absurd.

Indeed, it is so. At the point of launch or at the approach to landing, each move is critical. In simple terms, the overwhelming 'enemy' in flight is the ground. Having a calamity ar 3000ft is not good, but a pilot has time to make corrections, throw the reserve or let the inherent desire to fly that the aircraft has take over. Sadly, the vast majority of pilots who are injured or worse are those at the beginning or the very end of their flight.

I find that my prayer life suffers from similar such perils. The calamity to prayer - giving up the attempt - is most likely at that moment when we seek to be with God, or in other words, the launch into prayer. If the peril is not praying, and sometimes, when conditions don't feel right, it is easier to abandon a time of prayer rather than press ahead.

In terms of the danger at landing, I liken this to the moment when a prayerful encounter should be drawn to its close. It is that very same moment when prayerful attention turns into daydreaming (though I see the good in the argument that at times, daydreaming is itself prayer). At landing, our prayers either draw to a close as they should, or they turn into the next shopping list.

In the middle of these two bracketing points, we can enjoy a safe and inspiring flight into prayer - largely free of that danger that can assault our moment with our Lord.