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Wings Set Me Free
A Sermon Given
by The Reverend Roger Fritts
on December 7, 2003
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
On the one hundred anniversary of powered, controlled human flight,
I have found a wealth of humor about flying. One example is from
Qantas Airlines. After every Qantas Airlines flight, pilots complete a
gripe sheet that conveys to the mechanics problems encountered with
the aircraft during the flight that need repair or correction. The
form used is a piece of paper on which the pilot completes the top
part listing the problem. The mechanics read and then respond in
writing on the lower half of the form what remedial action they took.
On the next flight of that plane the pilot reviews the form before
taking off. According to an internet web site these are logged
maintenance complaints and responses with the problem logged by the
pilot, the solution and action taken by mechanics. (Of course much of
the humor on the internet is made up, not real.)
Pilot’s note: Test flight OK, except auto-land
very rough.
Airplane mechanic’s reply: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.
Pilot’s note: Dead bugs on windshield.
Airplane mechanic’s reply: Live bugs on back-order.
Pilot: Autopilot in altitude -hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute
descent.
Airplane mechanic: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.
Pilot: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
Airplane mechanic: Evidence removed.
Pilot: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
Airplane mechanic: That's what they're there for.
Pilot: Suspected crack in windshield.
Airplane mechanic: Suspect you're right.
Pilot: Number 3 engine missing.
Airplane mechanic: Engine found on right wing after brief search.
Pilot’s note: Aircraft handles funny.
Airplane mechanic’s note in reply: Aircraft warned to straighten up,
fly right and be serious.
Pilot: Target radar hums.
Airplane mechanic: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.
Pilot: Mouse in cockpit.
Airplane mechanic: Cat installed
Although we often take it for granted the invention of the two sons
of a Brethren minister from Dayton, Oho has changed the human race
forever. Half the people who live in the Washington, D.C. area would
likely not be here. Many of the products in our stores would not be
there. In a world without flight the President could not fly to Bagdad
and back in twenty-seven hours.We could not have dropped the Atomic Bomb
on Japan. The Pope could not have made a papal visit to nearly every
country in the world.
As we approach the 100 hundred anniversary of powered, controlled
flight, I invite you to recall the first time you ever flew in an
airplane. Do you recall who you were with? Where you were going? How did
you feel? What did you see? I took my first airplane flight in the 1960s
when I was fourteen years old. It was a flight from Salt Lake City to
Phoenix. I got a window seat and for more than two hours I looked out on
the earth. We flew south over what is now Capital Reef National Park,
and then across what is now the Grand Staircase-Escalante National
Monument, and across the red rock of Bryce Canyon. The small propeller
driven passenger plane flew low as we crossed the Grand Canyon,
something flight rules no longer permit. South of the canyon we passed
over Flagstaff then Sedona, and a short time later we arrived at Sky
Harbor Airport in Phoenix.
From above the world appeared flatter then I first expected. Still, I
could see life with a new perspective as I looked down on the face of a
planet. The patterns of roads and rocks, of trees and farms, and of
clouds and sky absorbed my attention. After looking upward at clouds all
my short life I found it amazing and wonderful and pleasing to look at
them close up, from the sides, from above.
Have you ever been in the cockpit of a small airplane, wrapped in
glass, awash in brilliant light with spectacular views of the earth
below? In the mid 1960s, my father decided to learn to be a pilot. He
signed up for lessons at Deer Valley Airport. The instructor used a
four-passenger plane to teach students and he invited my father to take
me along. So I sat in the back of the small airplane looking out the
window as my father learned to fly.
I discovered then that the best aerial views are low views at a speed
of about 200 miles an hour. I have memories of looking down at the Four
Peaks Wilderness area and the superstition wilderness area. Below I
could see the mountains and valleys of the Sonora desert and the forests
of saguaro cactuses. Eventually my Dad stopped the lessons and never
received his pilot’s license. Still I cherish that view of the desert
from above and I cherished that time with my father.
Of course, plane travel has always reflected the gap between the
first world and the third world. The vast majority of people have have
never seen the world above the clouds. Still, in the United States most
of us can take advantage of air travel at bargain prices. This winter,
for example, we can fly tp Paris for $119.00.
For those of you who have crossed an ocean in an airplane do you
remember the experience? I was able to save enough money to pay for a
flight to Europe when I was eighteen. I joined tens of thousands of
other young people flying Icelandic Airlines from New York, to Iceland,
and then to Luxemburg. For many years it was the cheapest flight to
Europe. They kept costs down by using old propeller airplanes that they
had bought from other airlines. We flew ten hours to Iceland, where we
refueled and flew another six hours to Luxemburg. Counting time on the
ground in Iceland, the flight was just a little faster then it had taken
Lindbergh a few years before.
On my Icelandic Airlines flight I had a window seat. For hours I
could see nothing but the blackness of the sky and the ocean. Iceland
finally appeared as small lights in the darkness of night. A passage I
later read in the book Night Flight, by Antonine de Saint-Exupéry
comes to my mind. The book is about pioneering French airmail pilots in
South America. He wrote:
Sometimes, after a hundred miles of land as
desolate as the sea, he encountered a lonely farmhouse that seemed to
be sailing backwards from him in a great prairie sea, with its freight
of human lives. . . . Gathered round their lamp-lit table, those
peasants do not guess that their desire carries so far, out into the
vastness of the night that hems them in.
In the same way I doubt that the people in the house in Iceland
thought about how their lights carried into the vastness of the night.
The view from above gave me new perspective on human life.
When we sing the words "wings set me free" I think of the purest form
of flight, hand gilding and para gliding. In the mid 1970s while I was
living in Berkeley studying for the ministry, I took a day trip with
friends to Mount Tamalpais north of San Francisco. We arrived at the top
of the mountain as two young men were preparing to jump off into space
holding on to what looked to me like big kites. When they jumped, I
thought of the story of Icarus in Greek mythology who perished by flying
too near the Sun with waxen wings. But these young men did not die. They
floated into the air and were still visible half an hour later floating
in the sky above the trees on the mountain.
One summer day twenty years later I took a ski lift to the top of a
mountain in the Tetons and watched para gliding. Developed by the French
in the 1980s the para glider has no frame. It is a rectangular
parachute. High on the mountain I watched a young woman place the fabric
on the ground behind her and strap herself into a seat harness. Then she
tugged on ropes that caused the fabric to rise and fill with wind. With
a short run down a hill the para glider lifted her off her feet. As she
picked up speed, the glider took her out across trees, across the
mountain and the valley itself. I felt like I was watching a throwback
to the earliest era of human flight. It was like the time before the
Wright brothers, when pioneers tried to design human wings that would
work like the wings of birds. It so impressed me that I asked the para
gliders if they attended a school to learn how to glide. They told me of
a three week course at a school near Salt Lake City. I was tempted. It
could be a spiritual experience! In my imagination wings set me free.
But then I noticed that all the para gliders were under the age of
thirty.
Flying is not without risk. I was taking a flight from Los Angeles to
San Francisco several years ago. The trip is short, lasting about an
hour. The airplane was a giant wide-bodied machine with seats for more
than three hundred persons, although that evening the passenger section
was nearly empty.
I selected a seat in the back next to a window. Only one other person
was in the back right-hand side of the airplane; a woman took a seat in
front of me. No one else on the plane could see the back of the right
engine except this woman and me.
At the Los Angeles airport flights take off over the Pacific Ocean.
As I watched from the window, we rose smoothly into the air, the lights
of the city giving way quickly to the darkness of the water.
Then, suddenly, a big, bright yellow flame appeared outside my
window. A stream of fire rushed out of the right engine. Only two of us
could see it. The woman in the seat in front of me began to scream. "Oh
my God!" she cried, "The plane is on fire! Oh my God! We're going to
crash!" Other passengers turned and looked back at the woman and then at
me, with questioning expressions on their faces. Because I had the same
view, they expected me to either confirm or deny the woman's statements.
Different thoughts raced through my head. The minister part of me
wanted to reassure people that everything was all right. I saw myself
standing up and saying, "It's okay. It’s just that the engine on fire.
Everything will be fine. Just relax." However, it occurred to me that I
did not know whether it was all right. It could be that the woman was
correct. It could be that we were going to crash. If this were so, it
did not seem appropriate to spend the last moments before we hit the
water trying to calm her down. After all, I had learned in seminary to
encourage people to express their feelings. Let her scream, I decided.
Maybe all of us should be screaming.
The cabin began to fill with the smell of smoke. A small sign in
front of me said "SEAT CUSHION WILL FLOAT." It began to take on new
meaning. The pilot's voice came over the loud speaker. His voice had
that reassuring West Virginia accent that all airline pilots have
cultivated. "We've had one of our engines go out. Just to play it safe,
we will be returning to Los Angeles and changing planes." The frightened
woman in the seat in front of me quieted down. A few minutes later I
could see the runway and feel the wheels touch the ground. We taxied
safely back to the terminal.
While I waited for the next flight I took a walk outside. I found
myself looking intensely into the sky, really seeing it, experiencing it
fully. I looked up over the rooftops of the airport buildings, feeling a
renewed awareness that there was a whole universe of beauty, a world
full of wonders that I had in the rush of events almost lost track.
Wright Brothers invented a machine that helps us in many ways better see
the earth on which we live.
I visited Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in the summer of 1971. Friends
rented the old Lifesaving station on the beach for a week and invited me
to visit. The house had been there when the Wright Brothers had flown in
1903. In 1971 the owners rented it out as a summer home to tourists. My
friends who were renting the house said that it was also the location of
the old telegraph office. In that house Orville had handed the operator
the message announcing the success of the first flight. From the
Lifesaving station I walked to the Wright Brothers National Memorial. On
the ground were markers noting the distances of the first flights that
day in December, now nearly 100 years ago. That day they changed human
life in the same way a creature changed life millions of years ago when
it first came out of the water and onto the land.
Of course, most people did not notice the change at first. Wilbur and
Orville’s father, Reverend Wright, the Bishop in the Church of the
Brethren, received the telegram announcing the success of the first
flight. He prepared an announcement and his other son, Lorin Wright,
carried the announcement to the Dayton, Ohio Journal. The editor
would not run the story. "If it had been fifty-seven minutes instead of
fifty-seven seconds, we might print it," the editor said, "but we’re
glad to hear the Wrights will be home for Christmas." The brothers
arrived home from Kitty Hawk by train, December 23, 1903. Two days later
they sat down to Christmas dinner with the family, and looked forward to
a new year.
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