A Gift of Wings

“Now, breaking the law, to a pilot, would be the same thing that you might call ‘sin.’ You might even word your definition of sin as ‘breaking the Law of God’ or something like that. But the best I can understand about your kind of sin is that it is something vaguely nasty that you’re not supposed to do for reasons that you don’t very well understand. Well, in flying, there’s no question about sin. It isn’t hazy in any pilot’s mind.

“If you break the laws of aerodynamics, if you try to hold a seventeen-degree angle of attack on a wing that stalls at fifteen degrees, you fall away from God at a pretty good clip. If you don’t repent, and get in harmony with aerodynamics before long, you’ll have some penalties to pay—like a huge bill for airplane repairs—before you’ll ever get back in the sky again. In flying, you get your freedom only when you obey the laws of the sky. If you don’t feel like obeying them, you are chained to the ground for the rest of your life. And that, for airplane pilots, is what we call ‘hell’.”

The holes in this man’s so-called religion were big enough to drive trucks through. “All you’ve done,” I said, “is take the words from church and replaced them with your words of flying! All you’ve done …”

“Exactly. The symbol of the sky isn’t quite perfect, but it is an awful lot easier to understand than most people’s interpretation of the Bible. When some pilot spins out of the top of a loop, nobody says it was the will of the sky that it happened. It is nothing mysterious. The guy broke the rules of smooth flight, trying too high an angle of attack for the weight he had on the wings, and down he went. He sinned, you might say, but we don’t consider that a nasty thing, we don’t stone him for it. It was just kind of a dumb thing that shows he still has something more to learn about the sky.

“When that pilot comes down, he doesn’t shake his fist at the sky … he’s mad at himself, for not following the rules. He doesn’t ask favors of the sky, or burn incense to it, he goes back up there and corrects his mistake; he does it right. A little higher airspeed, maybe, starting his loops. His forgiveness, then, comes only after he corrects his mistake. His forgiveness is that he is now in harmony with the sky and his loops are successful and beautiful. And that, to a pilot, is ‘heaven’ … to be in harmony with the sky, to know the laws and obey them.”

He picked a new dial from the bench and crawled back into his airplane.

“You can carry it on as far as you want,” he said. “Somebody who doesn’t know the laws of the sky would say it’s a miracle that a big heavy airplane magically rises off the ground, with no ropes or wires lifting it up. But that’s a miracle only because they don’t know about the sky. The pilot doesn’t think it’s a miracle.

“And the power pilot, when he sees a sailplane gain altitude without having any engine at all, doesn’t say, ‘There’s a miracle there.’ He knows that the sailplane pilot had studied the sky very carefully indeed, and is putting his study into practice.

“You probably wouldn’t agree, but we don’t worship the sky as if it were something supernatural. We don’t think we have to build idols and offer living sacrifices to it. The only thing we think is necessary is that we understand the sky, that we know what the laws are and how they apply to us and how we can better be in harmony with them and so find our freedom. That’s where that joy comes in, that makes the new pilots come down and talk about being close to God.” He tightened the lines to the new dial, inspecting them closely.

“When a student pilot starts to understand the laws, and sees them work for him just like they do for all the other pilots, then it’s all fun to him, and he looks forward to coming to the airport in the same way that maybe preachers wished their congregations looked forward to coming to church … to learn something new, and something that brings joy and freedom and release from the chains of the earth. In short, the pilot, studying the sky, is learning and he’s happy and every day is his Sunday. Isn’t that how any church-goer should feel?”

At last I had him. “Then your ‘religion’ says that your pilots are not miserable sinners, soon to suffer hell and damnation, fire and brimstone?”

He smiled again, that same infuriating smile that didn’t even give me the comfort of thinking he hated me.

“Well, not unless they spin out of a loop …”

He was finished with the airplane, and pushed it out from the shed into the sunlight. The clouds were breaking apart.

“I think you’re a heathen, do you know that?” I said, with all the venom I could, and I hoped a lightning bolt would strike him dead, and prove just how heathen he was.

“Tell you what,” he said. “I have to check the turn needle in this airplane. Why don’t you just come along and we’ll take one little flight around the field and you can make up your mind whether we’re heathens or the sons of God.”

I saw his plot at once … to push me out when we were up, or else hit an air pocket and kill us both in his hatred for me. “Oh, no you don’t. No getting me up in that coffin! I’m on to you, you know. You’re a heathen and you’ll roast in the fires of hell!”

His answer sounded as if it was to himself, more than it was to me … so soft I could barely hear him.

“Not as long as I obey the laws,” he said.

He climbed into that little cloth airplane and started the motor. “You’re sure you don’t want to go up?” he called out.

I didn’t dignify him with an answer, and he went flying all by himself.

So listen to me, you flying people, who talk about your “knowing the sky” and your “laws of aerodynamics.” If the sky is God, it is mystery and it is wrath and it will strike you down with lightning and affliction and make you suffer for your blasphemy. Come down out of the sky, come back to your senses, and ask us no more to join you on your Sunday afternoons.

Sunday is a time for worship, and don’t you forget it.

Chronology

People who fly 1968

I’ve never heard the wind 1959

I shot down the Red Baron, and so what 1970

Prayers 1971

Return of a lost pilot 1969

Words 1970