A Brown
Pelican glides effortlessly down the beachfront against a stiff south wind. To
watch, one might easily deduce flight to be absolutely easy, a simple thing. This
awkward, bigheaded, non-airworthy-looking bird doesn’t seem to move a muscle as
it sometimes skims inches over the surface of the water, floating over the
breakers like no other, to unbelievable distances, flapping slowly only after
long intervals.
It
seems as if all I would have to do to accomplish the same is stand on the dune
and dexterously position a couple flaps of cardboard under my arms. Voila,
liftoff! No wonder the bird’s face seems set in a permanent smile.
How is
it that a man like me so often dreams of unaided flight? To soar, to fly, to
lift above the uneven earth, its yawning valleys, its prodigious heights?
For
now, though, I am a kite, not a bird: I require both string and tail. The
string is my humanity, my ‘creatureliness’ created of my heavenly Father, the
part that holds me back to allow me lift. But the wind of the Holy Spirit gives
me to rise in concerted force, leveraged with my very humanity. And all is held
in balance, stabilized, by the tail that is Jesus Christ. I know that’s a
strange designation for the Lord of my life, but it seems fit to the analogy.
Just
the same, my life as a kite is only a foretaste. We were made to fly. Some day…
Soon.
~~RGM, from an earlier journal entry while at
Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge, Jupiter
Island FL
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