I landed the mission Cessna 180 at Corozalito and walked into the tiny grass-roof house where Wycliffe Bible Translators Florence Gridell and Mariana Slocum lived and worked. A small Chol Indian woman followed me in, laid her precious newborn baby girl on a rough wooden table, and cried out for Florence—“Doña Florencia; ayùdame, por el amor de Diòs! (Florence, help me, for the love of God!)” Florence took the baby in her arms but it was too late—after a few minutes the baby stopped breathing. It was 1968.

The woman wrapped up her precious bundle. When we walked outside I felt the heat and smelled the steaming jungle with its rotting vegetation. Florence told me, “We need to get to Mexico City. If you can fly us out to the highway at Salto, we’ll arrive just in time to catch the bus up to the capital.”

I agreed, and grabbed my spring scale to weigh up the women’s baggage. I told her, “With this heat and humidity we can’t carry more than 200 kilos.  I’ll have to take Mariana and the baggage out to Salto, then return to pick you up.”

Mariana and I climbed aboard the plane, and I taxied out to the end of the 300-meter airstrip hacked out of the jungle with the help of the Chol Indians. We took off, and at best angle of climb barely cleared the treetops at the end. Then I made a fateful decision. “Mariana, I think we should go back and pick up Florence.” I reasoned that we would save time by making only one flight to Salto rather than two. So I circled back and landed the second time in Corozalito.

Florence boarded, and we taxied to the end of the airstrip. She told us, “The mother already took her dead baby back to the village,” I thought about Florence and Mariana—fifty-ish, unpretentious, always wearing blouses and skirts (never pants), dedicated to the Chol people all around them. Every day they passed out pills, taught health classes, delivered Chol babies, and buried the dead. I thought about their brave work, thankful that Mission Aviation Fellowship could provide them air service.

For this second takeoff, I got out and pushed the tail of the plane back into the weeds so I could use every inch of the airstrip. The relentless sun rose hotter and hotter, and I felt sweat running down my spine. I noticed I was breathing heavily and my clammy hand clung to the throttle. Did I make the right decision? Do we have enough margin of safety? A little proud and overconfident, I hesitated to change my mind again.

I applied full power, released brakes, and the plane hurtled down the airstrip. We accelerated well, and as we rotated I willed the airplane into a climb. The engine sucked in the hot, humid air, doing its best. The trees loomed larger and larger.

Soon the highest tree branches filled the windshield—then we shot over them.

After flying the ten minutes to Salto, I unloaded the passengers and cargo and then checked the landing gear, half expecting to find twigs or pine needles caught in the wheel struts. I took off with a troubled mind and flew home to the MAF base in San Cristobal.

That evening, I scoured the inscape of my mind, wondering why I had talked myself into making that second takeoff with no margin of safety, a takeoff that jeopardized precious lives, all just to save twenty minutes. Instead of listening to the voice of my better angel, I had made a poor decision.

I said a humbled prayer—“Thank you God that yet again you refused to give me the consequences I deserved.” Mercy.

“Spreading your wings in a perplexing world”
October, 2016                                                                                        James Hurd      

CONTENTS

• New blog article: “A little rebellion in 100 words”
• Writer’s Corner
• Book reviews
• E-zine subscription information
• How to purchase Wingspread: Of Faith and Flying
• Quotable quotes

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NEW BLOG ARTICLE: “A little rebellion in 100 words”

 Every weekday I would drive my immaculate metallic gold 1953 Ford—dual chrome pipes, nosed, decked, and hung—into Orange High School’s dusty, potholed, student parking lot. It got dirty….  Read more here:  https://jimhurd.com/2016/10/11/a-little-rebellion-in-100-words/ 

(*Request: Please share with others, and leave a comment on the website after reading the article. Thanks.)

 WRITER’S CORNER

Writer of the Month: David McCullough. (Truman; John Adams; 1776) He is recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Great background research on his historical biographies and great detail.

Word of the Month:   Movie-making. Highlight all the parts of your piece that you could make a movie of. (I’ve actually used a highlighter to do this.) This is what gives the piece life, keeps it moving, and this should constitute at least fifty percent of the piece.

Farther vs. further. Farther: use only for distance. Further: use for “in addition” or in the sense of extending. “Further, I propose we seek a location farther from home.”

Quiz of the Month: What is wrong with these sentences? (Answers next month)

• Jake said, “I’m going out on the back porch to rest a while.”
• For some people it always takes more friends, less enemies, more excitement, more money, and more renown, whatever else it might take, to make them happier.
• We had a great day, it was unforgettable.
• The dog’s wound laid bare it’s internal organs.

Tip of the Month: Where do you put stuff? First, don’t put the beginning of your story at the beginning. Start it just before or just after the climax; then go back and provide the context. Keep the narrative flowing. Second, if you must provide lots of backstory (explanatory detail), sprinkle it in small doses amidst the driving narrative. Third, don’t tell your reader any more than she needs to know. Last, save the best paragraph, the best sentence, for the end.

BOOK REVIEWS

Lorraine Eitel and others. The Treasure of Christian Poetry. Fleming H. Revell: New Jersey. 1982. A compilation of some of the best Christian poetry in English from the Middle Ages through the 20th century. Includes poems by: William Wordsworth, John Milton, George Herbert, Christina Rossetti, Robert Browning, C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, and many others. My favorite compilation of Christian poetry. (Disclaimer: All the editors taught at Bethel University.)

David McCullough. The Wright Brothers. Simon & Schuster, 2015. The dramatic story of the courageous brothers who solved the problem of flight. Historic photos.

SUBSCRIBE FREE to this E-zine   Click here https://jimhurd.com/home/  to subscribe to Wingspread  E-magazine sent direct to your email inbox, every month. You will receive a free article for subscribing. Please share this URL with interested friends, “like” it on Facebook, retweet on Twitter, etc.

BUY JAMES HURD’S WINGSPREAD: A Memoir of Faith and Flying.  How childhood (Fundamentalist) faith led to mission bush-piloting in South America—and Barbara. Buy it here:  https://jimhurd.com/home/    (or at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, etc.)

See pics here related to Wingspread: Of Faith and Flying: http://www.pinterest.com/hurd1149/wingspread-of-faith-and-flying/

 QUOTABLE QUOTES

♠    I was always taught to respect my elders. It’s just getting harder to find them.

♠    Just one question for teachers: Would you enjoy being a student in the class you teach?

♠    Murder, considered a crime when people commit it singly, is transformed into a virtue when they do it en masse.   Cyprian, 3rd African Bishop

♠    Remember, God’s will was for John to be exiled, Paul to be jailed, Jesus to be executed. Why do we assume God’s will for us is to have a great job, a happy life, and a large bank account?

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Follow “james hurd” on Facebook, or “@hurdjp” on Twitter

If you wish to unsubscribe from this Wingspread E-zine, send an email to hurd@usfamily.net and say in the subject line: “unsubscribe.” (I won’t feel bad, promise!) Thanks.

It was 1950, and for our family, Sundays were different than weekdays. We were Fundamentalists—conservative, baptistic, churchgoers who took the Bible literally and eschewed the outside world. Without question or debate, every Sunday we went to church. Our house had only one bathroom, so we boys had to get in there before 7:00 a.m., jump in fast and then jump out. Dad lit the gas flame on the water heater about one-half hour before bath time. I filled up the tub and lay there steamy and soaking, ignoring my sisters banging on the bathroom door—“Jamie; are you done? We need to get in there!”

Mother said, “When the water heater gets hot, be sure to turn it off so it won’t explode.” I gazed at my young self in the huge vertical mirror that hung opposite the sink, and harbored visions of flying shrapnel bloodying my naked body.

We always dressed up. Mother would put on a black hat with a black ribbon and half veil, black low-heeled shoes, and always dark hose (no shaved legs.) I think the hat and veil were a hangover from pre-war customs, because women under 40 never wore them. Mom and the girls always wore dresses well below the knee. Even in summer Dad wore a suit, white shirt, and tie. He was president of the county-wide Christian Evangelism organization, and on his lapel he always wore his cross-and-crown CE pin. I usually wore a collar shirt, slacks, brown shoes, and a little brown sports coat with matching pen and pencil in the pocket.

We drove to church in our black 1939 fastback Ford, a car which Dad bought just after World War II. Mom carried Mary in her arms while Dad drove. Virginia and I sat in the back seat, or sometimes I stood on the front bench seat between Mom and Dad. No seatbelts or child seats. We drove eight miles to church—down Cambridge, turn right at Fairhaven, cross the tracks and go south on Santa Clara to 17^th Street, west on 17^th Street to Edinger Street, then left. We parked near the little white church with its squat bell tower sitting on a sandy lot. It had no air conditioning. Knotty pine walls lined the auditorium, and in both corners above the platform, Scripture verses were painted on white boards. “He that hath the Son hath life…” I memorized them.

Sunday at Silver Acres Church was an extended affair. Opening Exercises started in the auditorium (we never called it a sanctuary). Age-graded Sunday school followed—Sunday school was big at Silver Acres. I sat in Mrs. Wallace’s class, fascinated. She would place the cloth figures on her “flannelgraph” board: “Here is Jesus, and here is Peter and John getting into the boat.” Then we went back to the auditorium for Closing Exercises.

After a short break the church service began with Pop McIntosh up front in his suspenders, leading the singing and waving his arms to keep time. Brother Cantrell’s 40 minute sermon, the morning’s highlight, always came last. He used to say, “Sermonettes make Christianettes,” and, “If you’re looking for a church to join, we are Fundamentalist, Bible-believing, independent, unaffiliated, non-denominational, pre-Tribulational, and pre-Millennial.” I thought, If you understand all that, you deserve to be baptized!

Most Silver Acres men worked blue collar. Dad carpentered for forty years, Ben was a mechanic, Cliff sold lumber, Earl ran a gas station, and Mr. Zanstra milked dairy cows. Regular, unpretentious, Godly people. They and their wives became my surrogate uncles and aunts.

Purity—that’s what we were after. The liberal theology of “Modernist” churches alarmed us, along with the general decay of American morality that began in the 1920s. Brother Cantrell said, “You need to live a life separated from both the polluted world and from the Modernists.” Modernists, which included Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Episcopals, had different doctrines and they didn’t believe in inerrancy.  Brother Cantrell warned us against Modernists such as Norman Vincent Peale and Harry Emerson Fosdick. He taught passionately about the virgin birth, atonement, pre-tribulational rapture, and inerrancy—arcane doctrines I learned thoroughly by the time I was ten. And his certainty fired us up—the Bible was self-explanatory, and its teachings were fixed for the ages. It contained doctrine you could take to the bank.

 After church ended, we would drive home to a huge meal. Although we rarely ate rich meat, I never suspected we were poor. On weekdays we would eat hamburger and “organ meats”— tongue, heart, or liver. But Sundays were special. We ate roast beef and potatoes, green beans, and sliced tomatoes, with ice cream for dessert.

On Sunday afternoons, peace reigned. Dad would take a nap. No playing in the neighborhood. No radio. We couldn’t read The Santa Ana Register. We were never allowed to go to the movies. No friends over, unless they were Silver Acres friends. No weekend trips away. Once my friend Jerry asked me, “Wanna go on a camping trip with us?” I asked Mom. She said “You can’t go because it’s over Sunday.” Jerry went to a Modernist church (Methodist).

We did play some in the two and a half acres of orange grove behind our house—pulling a wagon up and down the rows or organizing illicit orange fights. Back in the house we read, played checkers, or played Christian music on the Victrola (a wind-up phonograph player with big 78 RPM records). I read Power, a take-home pamphlet from church. Sunday afternoons were quiet, peaceful, home- and family-based. I read good books and learned lots of Bible verses.

After supper we all piled back into the Ford and drove to church for “evening services.” Pop McIntosh led singing—Power in the Blood, At Calvary, The Old Rugged Cross, Jesus Saves; plus Gospel choruses—I’ve Got a Home in Gloryland, Deep and Wide, and Do Lord. I loved these songs and knew them by heart. Dad and I played our clarinets in the church band. I hoped that my platform performance impressed Linda, who sat in the front row.

Our family was a little island, separated from our non-Fundamentalist neighbors. The unworldliness of Fundamentalism turned me in toward family friends and family values, kept me home-centered, secure, and it kept me from the world. As I grew up Fundamentalist, I felt a strong foundation under my feet, a circle of people that cared about me, a set of sturdy, Bible-based beliefs that inspired me. I felt part of a larger family that cared for and protected me. I got saved when I turned five and baptized when I was twelve.

Today, I hope I’ve rejected the narrowness, intolerance, and holier-than-thou attitudes I acquired in my childhood. I try to embrace a more generous orthodoxy that makes room for Modernists, Catholics, and others.

And yet I still feel like a dried-out drunk at an AA meeting—“Hello. I’m James, and [it’s like confessing a sin] I’m still [sort of] a Fundamentalist.”

O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us
Robert Burns

You’re kidding yourself! No, really–you are. What are you going to do about it?

 In self-deception you’re both the deceiver and the deceived—you talk yourself into a lie. But SD is so frequent  you don’t even notice it.

Examples abound. I tell myself I can indulge my lust and still have high morals. Although I’m all for good nutrition, I tell myself it’s OK to eat lots of sugars and fats. (Anyway, next week I’ll start my diet.) When I was a pilot, I convinced myself I could beat the odds and fly through bad weather–a practice I condemned in other pilots.

St. Paul feels my pain: “…what I do is not the good I want to do.” (Rom 7:19). Vintage SD—no big deal, really—except when it leads to disaster. In dating, SD can lead to sexual immorality and a broken heart. In nutrition, SD can lead to frail health and an early death. In aviation, SD can lead to a fatal accident.

Where does SD come from? It comes from my split will. My “will” is not single; it’s more like a food fight among dysfunctional members of a board. The voices of reason get out-shouted by the short-sighted members who favor easy-feel-good over hard-but-better.

What to do?

• I need to tell myself the truth, to admit that I’m a sucker for SD.
• I need faithful people around me to correct and warn me (for example, an accountability group).
• I need to remember: God is true; I’m not.

As St. Paul says, “…the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2). Not my SD “truth,” but God’s.

Thus, they in mutual accusation spent
The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning.
And of their vain contest appeared no end.

Milton

I remember walking away, looking for Adam and telling myself, Wow, Eve! The big green snake was scary, but he really talked sense. I ate the fruit and I didn’t die. Anyway, God loves me so much I’m sure one piece of fruit is no big deal for him.

Scene I: The TKGE

Shortly after we arrived in the park God had told us, “Enjoy, celebrate, but don’t eat any fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil or you’ll die.” (Adam and I referred to the tree as “the big TKGE.”)

So I ask Adam, “If God loves us, why would he deny us good fruit?”

Adam says, “I don’t know; he has his reasons, I guess. Maybe it’s a test. Anyway there’re so many other good trees.”

“Yeah, but I wonder if the TKGE fruit looks different. There must be something special about it.”

“Maybe, but I’m busy here with the vegetable garden, so let’s talk about it later.” (In those special days, guys ate green, leafy vegetables.)

But I’m wondering why God put the tree in the middle of the park. I’m thinking I’ll walk over and take a good look at it. I should take Adam along, but he’s always busy tinkering, doesn’t like to be disturbed, never likes to go anywhere, would probably be bored, and anyway, he probably would try to keep me from going.

I’m walking among the maple, oak, apple and pear trees, and just happen to spot the TKGE. It seems kind of ordinary, really, but with big red fruit. No fence around it or anything. I think, I’ll just walk over and look at it; I won’t touch it.

Then I see a form gliding through the nearby trees, now revealed, now hidden by the leaves.  Smooth, iridescent green skin, dark unblinking eyes, looking steadily at me. I jump back, but he fascinates me. It’s kind of like the dirty parts in a movie—you try not to look, but you do anyway.

I startle when he speaks—“The fruit trees are great, aren’t they? Did God say you can’t eat from any of these trees?”

“Oh no, actually we can eat from all of them, except we can’t even touch that Knowledge Tree there or we’ll die!”

“You won’t die! It’s just that he knows that if you eat it you’ll have great knowledge like he does. He’d rather keep you in the dark. I’ve been around here for awhile; I know how these things work. Anyway, you’re special. If God loves you, he wouldn’t want to deny you anything, would he? What’s the point of creating the big red fruit if he didn’t mean for you to eat any?”

I thought, That seems reasonable, like the voice of experience. I’m feeling the pull of the serpent’s eyes, and smelling the sweet fruit. I kind of wish Adam were here with me….

All at once, I reach out my hand, grab the fruit, and eat.

The fruit explodes sweet in my mouth. I eat the whole thing but, not wanting to litter, I save the core. And I didn’t die! I can’t wait to tell Adam. The snake has disappeared.

Scene II: The God-encounter

I find Adam tilling the kale and Swiss chard (green and leafy). “Adam—I ate the TKGE fruit and look, I didn’t die! It tastes so sweet. We must have misunderstood what God said.”

“O boy! Do I have to go every place with you? Who’ve you been talking to?”

“Well, you were busy and I was only going to look at it.”

“But what’re we going to tell God? He said don’t eat it.”

“Why did he put it there if he didn’t want us to eat it?”

His face clouds, he hesitates, then suddenly he grabs the core from my hand and eats it.

Just like a guy, I think. But is he really hungry? Or just so dependent on me that, realizing I might be kicked out of the park, he wants to be sure he’ll be kicked out with me?

Now Adam starts looking me up and down–and up and down. I blush. Strange; I’ve never felt self-conscious before. I find some fig leaves and use fibers to sew them together to make loincloths for us. As an afterthought, I sew two additional small round ones for me. We walk deeper into the forest because for the first time, we just want to be alone. And I feel something new—guilt.

After a couple of hours I hear God calling out: “Adam, where are you?” (Why doesn’t God call for both of us?) We walk deeper into the forest, playing hide and seek.

God finally catches up with us and says to Adam, “Why are you hiding?”

So my smart husband comes up with humankind’s first excuse: “I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.”

God asks, “Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat the fruit I told you not to eat?”

Adam gets a pained look on his face, immediately confesses, and then passes the buck: “Yep, I did, but this woman that you gave me insisted that I eat it, and you know her—I just couldn’t say no.”

At this point God rolls his eyes, gives up on Adam, and turns to me. I boldly re-pass the buck: “Well, the serpent told me to eat it, and you know weak little me—no sales resistance. Adam wouldn’t come with me—he didn’t even warn me.”

God finds the serpent and tells him the bad news: “Henceforth you’ll be looking at life from the ground up. And people will step on your head.” The unblinking eyes disappear into the greenery.

Then he turns to me: “It will hurt you to bear children, and now your husband will be telling you what to do.”

“You mean Adam? Really? How well do you know this man? He can’t even change his mind without consulting me. Can’t follow instructions, no initiative. How could he be the leader?”

“Well, Eve, you know he’ll be ticked if he isn’t in charge. And even though you have to pretend he’s the leader in public, you can always influence him at home. Trust me; this’ll work.”

“Well, I guess I’ll just have to try to keep Adam from screwing up.”

Then God turns to Adam: “Failure of leadership! Why didn’t you stop her from going? Why didn’t you tell her not to talk to strangers?”

At this, Adam is probably thinking, I’ve tried that before, but you know how hard it is to tell her anything.

God tells him, “You thought life was complicated in the garden. But now you’ll have to dig in harder soil, wrestle with thorns and destroying insects, and perform sweaty labor. It isn’t going to be a walk in the park.” Adam hung his head and thought about his easy work—the garden vegetables had almost sprung up by themselves. Then he made a fateful decision that has influenced all of his male descendants—he promised himself, I’ll never willingly eat green leafy vegetables again.

Then God kicked us out of the park and posted a guard so we couldn’t get back in. He replaced our fig-leaf loincloths with the skins of slain animals. I hung my head, but Adam asked God if he could eat the animal meat.

Scene III: Outside looking in

I remember those early “outside” days. We hung on the chain link fence like banished traitors, looking in at the beautiful park we could never again enter. Some brambles were already sticking their ugly heads through the fence into the park, and the grass inside was browning. I thought, How ungrateful we were; how much we took for granted.

Adam asked me, “Eve, why did you wander off like that? Anyway, who ever heard of a talking snake? Why didn’t you ask me before you ate the fruit?”

“Well, why didn’t you warn me? Why didn’t you put your foot down? Then I never would have gone. Or at least, you should have insisted on going with me. Failure of leadership.”

“Eve, Didn’t you even stop to think? You knew God had a good reason to prohibit that tree.”

“Well, maybe, but it’s not my fault you ate the fruit that I gave you.”

And so we passed the hours in fruitless arguing.

How was I to know that my simple decision would affect our grandchildren’s grandchildren? That they would only be able to dream about a walk in the park? They’ll blame us for eating, but I’ll bet they would’ve done the same thing. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.