The Knack of Missing the Ground

Douglas Adams, in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” told us that “the knack to flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” It’s a beautiful comic line, of course — delightfully absurd. But like all good humor, it hides a truth. It’s a truth about how we can move through the world. Truth about wisdom and about faith.

There is a way of living that feels very much like missing the ground — a way of moving lightly, freely, that utilizes the gravity we experience in God, without being dragged down by clinging fear, weighty suspicion, or the gripping pull of other people’s anxieties. And when I think about that way of living, I think of Gooley.

Joseph Bayly’s story I Saw Gooley Fly is a small parable that stays with you. It does with me at least. Gooley is a college student who simply flies. He just steps off the earth or out a window and rises. But, by the end of the story, we learn that he never explains how he does it. He just leaves the students around him with the mystery and goes off to a place where everyone can fly.

In a second Gooley story, Ceiling Zero, he goes where everyone can fly but no one does. They walk everywhere, heads down, feet heavy, living as though flight was a discussion and not an activity. They have the knowledge, but not the wisdom. The capacity, but not the courage. The wings, but not the will.

Bayly’s point is sharp: Wisdom is only wisdom when it is put to work. Otherwise, it’s just information. It’s just doctrine. It’s just a place full of grounded people who could be airborne but are trying to decide whether they should let others know how to do it.

I thought of Gooley again listening to Steven Bartlett interview John Lennox, the Oxford mathematician and Christian apologist. At the end, Bartlett told Lennox that his strongest argument for faith wasn’t his logic or his apologetics — it was him. It was the peace Lennox carried. A peace Bartlett had seen in other Christians. A peace that wasn’t defensive, anxious, or combative. A peace that moved lightly in the world.

That peace is flight.

It’s the knack of missing the ground.

It’s the lived expression of a faith that has been enjoyed, not merely believed. It’s the difference between reciting truth about God and inhabiting faith in God. It’s the difference between walking and flying.

We live in a world where people shout “danger” with increasing volume, even from the highest levels of government. Some warnings are real. Many are projections. Some are invitations to surrender our freedom for someone else’s certainty. And some are built on anger, fear of the other, or a need for control.

When someone shouts danger, wisdom doesn’t ignore them. Wisdom looks. Wisdom discerns. Wisdom attempts to learn what might be coming.

But when the warning is born from fear of the other, from suspicion, from the desire to divide the world into “us” and “them,” wisdom passes it by. Because that kind of fear is not the gravity of God. It is weight that gets tied to our ankles to keep us on the ground. It pulls us downward. It makes us walk when we were meant to fly.

The gravity of God is assurance that has learned how the world works when it works well. It utilizes draft and weight distribution and speed and uplift. It teaches us how we are created to live. This is wisdom that acts while recognizing that wisdom doesn’t guarantee safety. It has survived every century, and is the relationship with God that Jesus embodied. It sees individuals as fellow creatures that carry the image of God and refuses to let fear define the horizon. It’s the wisdom that knows death is possible but does not let that possibility shrink life.

It moves freely with others, lightly, without suspicion, and carries peace. Bartlett recognized it in Lennox. Gooley lived it and finally began explaining how to do it. It’s the essence of throwing yourself at the ground and missing.

The knack of missing the ground is not a technique. It’s not a method. It’s not a secret.

It’s a way of being.

It’s the way of standing in wisdom even when danger exists. That is, seeing people as people and not threats. It’s the way of refusing fear-based narratives, and, instead, living lightly in a heavy world.

It’s faith that has become enjoying life.

And when we live that way — when we participate in wisdom's way rather than merely knowing about it — we begin to rise. We move differently. We are lifted by peace and assurance.

We miss the ground and fly.