I think we were in a Hard Rock Cafe in St. Louis or something like that. Erin, BJ, Rolly and I were sharing stories again...this time about turbulence. Rolly told us about the time when the turbulence was so severe and sudden on a flight he was taking that he literally had to pull the attendant to the floor before she hit the ceiling. BJ added a story about the time when his plane was struck by lightning and they lost altitude for a few terrifying seconds.

I’ve always hated turbulence. Ever since I can remember as a child on my first flight screaming, crying, clutching my mom’s shirt and shutting my eyes as tight I as I could. Every jolt, swell and drop was a signal to me that we we’re hundreds of miles from the ground and at any moment we were going to start falling and not stop falling until we met the ground in a fiery heap. The fear became less intense as I grew up but never fully left me. Even after traveling on planes for 11 years my palms get a little sweaty during every take-off. 

I told them about my turbulent relationship with flying and all my little strategies to try and minimize my in-flight fears. They told me more flying horror stories. Which is sort of a strange way to comfort someone.

  “Oh you’re afraid of flying?... yeah, I was on a flight once 

  where the engine cut out and we almost died.”

Not exactly what you’d expect right? We don’t do this in other situations when we are trying to calm someone’s fears.

  “Oh, you’re afraid of getting cancer?... yeah, I had cancer once, 

  it was incredibly painful and many times I thought that death would 

  be a great idea, but made I it through and I’m still alive.”

Strange right?... the thing it is, It sort of worked.

As I finished up the fries on my plate Rolly talked about how bald eagles in flight would actually look for turbulent air. The warm and cool currents smashing together would create exhilarating lifts and swells that would allow the eagle to use a part of their wings they would normally not use. As if a part of them was designed just for such an experience and not only was it not frightening but fun... preferable to the still air.

As I write this now, I’m on a plane heading to Detroit. I’m experiencing some turbulence again and I can’t say that it doesn’t bother me, it does. It reminds me how limited I am and how fear still lives with me. I’m going to Detroit today for Rolly’s funeral. He died on Friday. Cancer. 

Rolly was one of my spiritual fathers. He raised me from an adolescent to adult. He loved me and believed in me and I loved him. His absence has caused a collision of opposing currents onto my path and I’m anxious about the turbulence; anxious to fly the way he taught me to, I’m still learning how to use these wings. I don’t know if I can handle the jet streams the way I saw him do it... so gracefully. On the other, hand I know he believed in me and I have a suspicion that he could see things in me that are still blurry to me. So, I’m going to try and trust him... and fly again.

 I stepped into the car, threw my bag in the passenger seat, put the key in the ignition and pressed the gas pedal. As I drove down Iris street I turned up the radio and realized that I was just in time to hear the coverage of the final launch of NASA’s space shuttle Atlantis.

I listened and thought about what it means to send a rocket into space in 2011. The technology has certainly evolved in forty years but there is still no guarantee that when you light that fuse now that the whole thing won’t just blow in your face. All that fuel, all that money and real human lives up in smoke. The stakes are so high. To say nothing of the pressure of being the last one in the line.

There was literally a haze of uncertainty around this launch for a week because of the weather. If the conditions weren’t within the boundaries of acceptable risk there would be no launch. Of course after all the doubts and conjecture the rocket was there on the platform. The news crews were on the lawn again and the world remembered, “Oh, yeah we still do this!” It seemed old fashioned. Still, I was surprised by how emotional I was. They started the count-down and removed the nose-cap.

I felt the inevitability of lift off approach but somewhere between “32” and “31” It stopped. There was problem with the device that removes the nose-cap. and for a moment I wondered if I was witnessing a failure... a very expensive failure.

I’m really not often thinking of failure so I don’t want you think I’m morose or anything but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least aware of it... very often. I think about it as we work on our own rocket... a sort of noah’s ark kind of rocket; building it out of the stuff we have lying around in the hopes of filling it with all kinds of animals.

I don’t really know what everyone thinks about what we’re doing, or if they even think about it at all, but the voice in my head often tells me, “They don’t get it Paul.... They don’t get it because your “mission” isn’t real.” or “You have a really noble idea but you don’t have what it takes to pull it off.”  The sky gets dark and the clouds get full and if I took the time to really calculate the odds I’d cut our losses and get a part time job and go back to school.”

The story of Atlantis didn’t end on “31” they still got to give their seat-belt one last tug as Control uttered the final “ 3. 2. 1.” and their lift-off shook the earth. I thought about  what an achievement it was just to get off the ground. Before, the mission even begins there is so much energy spent on simply breaking the power of gravity, it’s that strong. We can’t even turn our focus to our mission until that whole gravity thing is handled... Amazing. 

I listen to this launch and my eyes filled with tears. Much to my surprise I was getting emotional about this event... maybe because I’m also one of those countless Americans who inexplicably wants to be shot past the pull of the Earth into the stratosphere. Not so strange I guess, I just wasn’t expecting it...

It was then that I realized I was praying. I was asking The One who gave us the dream in the first place to give me the courage I needed to keep building the rocket he told us to build. I was asking him to “shush” the lies I was listening to... and eventually he did.

The tragic part about it all is that I often feel like I’ve been working all this time alone. I don’t often take the two seconds it takes to look around and see that I’m not the only one building the rocket. The people Christa and I love also love us, (and maybe even some people we don’t know love us... It could happen.) and they are crossing their fingers too. We’re all building this thing together, finding more artists, pilots, and other various animals. We watch the skies, pray for “acceptable risk” and look around for anyone who will give us a match. All for the sake of a launch.