Copyright 1999To touch the face of God
Learning to fly From the Ground Up, I’m Tony Seton.
Flying is lot more than a set of mechanical principles of thrust and lift. Much more than keeping a plane aloft between take-off and landing. There’s a spiritual component that may be best reflected in a poem called "High Flight", composed by John Gillespie Magee, Jr. at 30-thousand feet over England in 1941.
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings:
Sunward I ‘ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence: hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew --
And, while the silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
John Magee was 19 when he wrote this magic poem. While serving with the Royal Canadian Air Force, before the U-S got into the war. He died shortly afterward.
It is a humbling experience to slip the surly bonds of Earth, to ply a course through sun-split clouds, high in the sun-lit silence. Looking down with new perspective upon the terra firm life from which we rose. All seems so small and safe below, so vast and promising above.
We have been flying for merely a century now, a fraction of man’s time on Earth. We have circled our planet and have walked on the moon. Some hear the calling, to soar with the eagles, to reach for the sun, to touch the face of God.
From the Ground Up, I’m Tony Seton.