Trapeze artists swing back and forth to build up momentum, finally letting go of one bar as kinetic energy sends them off into the unknown. I mean, they know they are headed for the next bar, but between here and there it’s a blind leap of faith that carries them through some very serious unknown.
They are instrument flying.
A few years ago I was coming home from the funeral for my dad’s mom. I was somber, and it was hard to leave. Add to that, I was booked on a four-seater “paper” airplane that flies between Hyannis and Boston. It was me and the pilot and my bag. We were the last flight they allowed out that morning because the notorious Cape Cod fog had begun to consume the air. The pilot had made the trip hundreds of times, but you tend to think of it as his first when it’s your first. As we rose into the curtain of air, I strained to see anything in the grayness ahead of us.
When we were up a few thousand feet, the perky pilot turned around in his seat to face me and started up a conversation. I answered with quick one-word answers, hoping he would turn around and pay more attention to where we were going. Finally I blurted out a bit of concern, and he calmly explained to me that he didn’t need to see where we were going because we were flying according to the instruments.
I thought about the last few years of my grandmother’s life and how most of her memories had disappeared into the fog of Alzheimer’s. She left this world through that fog, holding hands with Jesus, to head full speed into the known and yet unknown. Instrument flying.
Everyday I get up and sit at my computer and stare into another empty document that needs to collect an assemblage of characters that will form words, sentences, and thoughts. I start with a vague idea of where I’m going, but mostly it is also instrument flying. I type on word and then another word and hope that that sentence will lead me to the next one. It is familiar but always as scary as the first time. You have to attack it full steam and trust that you will get where you are going. And if you don’t, you will pick up and start again tomorrow until you get there.
Anne Truitt says this is like the run the horse rider must make. The creative writer, painter, sculptor, (mother, father, professional, dreamer, planner, husband, wife, friend, pastor, plumber, doctor, etc.) gallops into the night in the driving rain catapulting themselves fully into some direction. When on occasion, it is discovered that it is the wrong direction, the rider might stop and while regrouping, may enjoy the company of friends and peel the mud off their feet for a bit. But “in the back of their minds, they never forget that the dark driving run is theirs to make again.”
Balancing the input of experience and intuition with the knowledge factors of empirical data, we daily put one foot after the other, flying by the instruments. Instrument flying has a destination which can only be glimpsed by flying on through to the other side of the fog. It is sending a child off to college, moving from one place to another, losing a family member or friend to death, taking on a new job, leaving an old job, starting school again after raising a family, trading in the rat race for a fishing pole or watercolor brush, leaving singleness for marriage, childhood for adulthood, day for night, and doubt for faith. It is a call from the past to the future, from what was to what is yet to be. Sometimes it is a call away from the familiar, but to something more desirable in the end. But to be sure, instrument flying can be quite exhilarating.
Noah was an instrument flier. He built a very large boat. He was faithful to the call of God on his life even when the fog was thick and it was difficult to see where he was headed or why he was even doing what he was doing. Everyday when he faced another piece of cypress that had to be planed and wedged into place on his incomparable task, I’ll be he wondered if he was riding full speed in the correct direction. But everyday he got up and made his dark run, with an eye to the sky watching for clouds. Eventually it rained. And he needed his boat.
Moses flew by instrument. Inexperienced travel guide that he was, he gathered up God’s people and led them away from a threatening past into the promise of a future. Trusting his instruments, Moses came to know the provision of God on a daily basis. With the vision of promise as his distant goal, for 40 years he got up every morning to throw himself full speed into his wilderness fog.
Marten Luther King, Blaise Pascal, Benjamin Franklin, Michelangelo, William Wilberforce, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the young virgin named Mary who was pregnant with the Son of God, Paul the apostle, the disciples after the resurrection. All were courageous instrument fliers. Daring the unknown, they flew to the other side of the fog, trusting not in their own senses but in the faith that had sustained them so many times before.
Flying by instruments is what walking in the Spirit is all about. I surrender my own intuitions and senses to something I cannot see. That surrender is called faith. Dallas Willard says, “Faith is not opposed to knowledge, it is opposed to sight.” So when I walk, ride, or fly into the fog, I trust the instruments, because my senses will mislead me.
I can’t see the next page I will write. Or how I will get through the fog of midlife to the other side, whatever is over there. But I know that if I will fly by faith and not by sight, I will land in the right place. I know that as a promise better than I know it by practice. I can’t help thinking that if I could just see a little bit more clearly, I’d be better at this. But then, that’s not faith. And it seems that faith is the best way to travel between here and there. Between this trapeze bar and the next.
– Kim Thomas, Living In the Sacred Now