Thoughts From the Middle of a Cloud

So here I am sitting at 32k ft up in the air, reading GK Chesterton. He had just finished describing one of the reasons he came to find that he believed orthodoxy; one of those reasons involved the magic of the universe.

``My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery. I generally learnt it from a nurse; that is, from the solemn and star-appointed priestess at once of democracy and tradition. The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now are the things called fairy tales, they seem to me to be the entirely reasonable things. The are not fantasies: compared with them other things are fantastic. Compared with them religion and rationalism are both abnormal, though religion is abnormally right and rationalism abnormally wrong. Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticized elfland, but elfland that criticized the earth. I knew the magic beanstalk before I had tasted beans; I was sure of the Man in the Moon before I was certain of the moon. This was at one with all popular tradition. Modern minor poets are naturalists, and talk about the bush or the brook; but the singers of the old epics and fables were supernaturalists, and talked about the gods of brook and bush. That is what the moderns mean when they say that the ancients did not “appreciate nature,” because they said that Nature was divine. Old nurses do not tell children about the grass, but about the fairies that dance on the grass; and the old Greeks could not see the trees for the dryads.
But I deal here with what ethic and philosophy come from being fed on fairy tales. If I were describing them in detail I could note many noble and healthy principles that arise from them. There is the chivalrous less of “Jack the Giant Killer”; that giants should be killed because they are gigantic. It is a manly mutiny against pride as such. For the rebel is older than all the kingdoms, and the Jacobin has more tradition than the Jacobite. There is the lesson of “Cinderella,” which is the same as that of the Magnificat = exaltavit humiles. There is the great lesson of “Beauty and the Beast”; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable. There is the terrible allegory of the “Sleeping Beauty,” which tells how the human creature was blessed with all birthday gifts, yet cursed with death; and how death also may perhaps be softened to a sleep. But I am not concerned with any of the separate statutes of elfland, but with the whole spirit of its law, which I learnt before I could speak, and shall retain when I cannot write. I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts.”

Thanks, Gilbert. Flying has always excited me but for different reasons. When I was young, it was because it scared me. Close quarters; loud noises; strange people; sudden jarring movements. Terrified the whole flight because of some primeval fear that God would drop the plane. Then I went to school and learned things; dumb things. Things like Bernoulli’s Principle and “laws” of flight. Reason drains the joy and the mystery of things; earlier in Orthodoxy, Gilbert said something to the effect of the only madmen being the completely logical people. Every normal person has a touch of the madman in them, and that is what keeps them sane.

So call me a madman, but flying is still magical. I know there are so-called laws that govern such things, but I say phooey on them. If the laws were really all that awesome, they wouldn’t let the frisbee come down to earth; the arms of science would hold me in the air after a flying leap. But the same laws that dictate that the plane remains aloft also dictate that I plummet back down after I attempt to do what the plane does.

Stupid laws.

For some people, there is nothing magical about this. There is nothing mysterious about it. What goes up must come down; some things just come down slower than others.

Stupid people.

The plane is magical because it stares the laws in the eye and says, “I’m calling the shots here. I defy your law of gravity; let it do it’s worst! I’ll take the air and atmosphere that cannot hold a man aloft and walk upon it like it is solid ground. And even before you had laws to explain it, birds and others of my kind were tiptoeing across the clouds long before you had any idea as to how we could.”

The law of gravity was broken, so new laws had to be made to explain the miracle away. And the bumblebee came along and winked at the new laws; then it chuckled and flew against the face of reason.

To me, few things are as exciting as taking off in a plane. If you and I ever chance to fly together, watch my face during takeoff. (That is, if my face isn’t plastered against the window so I can watch the ground fall away.) Chances are, you’ll see me smile; I can’t help myself. How many people across the centuries wished they could be doing what I am right now? How many attempts were made so once, just once, could man thumb his nose at nature and say, “Ha! Beat that”? And then when we finally did, flying lost it’s shininess after a while. It’s just like jumping in a car and driving, which at first glance seems pretty commonplace. Did you ever stop to think about how amazing it is that you can easily drive in five minutes to a place that it would take you an hour to walk to?

Planes and cars aren’t the rule; they’re the exception. The world is full of such mystery. It makes no sense. I can’t fly; but with the help of superpowers, a winged dragon, an airplane, or a magic potion I can. All the fuddy-duddies who believe in rules and laws might say that an airplane doesn’t belong in that list; I say that it does, and the only reason they’re crying about it is because they haven’t found proper chains of science to shackle the other three.

The world is far more mystical than we care to admit. And certainly more magical than we are comfortable with.