Cadences of God

For Ascension Sunday, I offer you the true story of Lawnchair Larry and his 1982 flight . . . 

Larry Walters was a truck driver, but his lifelong dream was to fly.  When he graduated from high school, Larry joined the Air Force hoping to become a pilot, but his poor eyesight disqualified him. So when he finally left the service, Larry had to satisfy himself with watching others fly the fighter jets that crisscrossed the skies over his backyard. But even so, as he sat there in his lawn chair, Larry still dreamed about the magic of flying.

Then one day, a brilliant idea dawned on him. Larry went down to the local Army-Navy surplus store and bought forty-five weather balloons, and several tanks of helium.  Back in his yard, Larry used straps to attach the balloons to his lawn chair.  He anchored the chair to the bumper of his jeep, and inflated the balloons with helium.  Then he packed a few sandwiches and drinks, and a loaded BB gun, figuring he could pop a few balloons when it was time to return to earth. His preparations complete, Larry sat in his chair and cut the anchoring cord.  His plan was to lazily float into the sky, and eventually back to earth. But things didn’t quite work out that way.

When Larry cut the cord, he didn’t float lazily up; he shot up as if fired from a cannon!
And he didn’t stop at just a couple of hundred feet either. No, Larry climbed and climbed until he finally leveled off at eleven thousand feet! At that height, he could hardly risk deflating any of the balloons, lest he unbalance the load and really experience flying.

So he stayed up there, sailing around for fourteen hours, totally at a loss about how to get down.
Eventually, Larry drifted into the approach corridor for Los Angeles International Airport.  A Pan Am pilot radioed the tower about passing a guy in a lawn chair at eleven thousand feet, with a gun in his lap, Now that would have been a conversation I would have given anything to have heard! As dusk fell, Larry began drifting out to sea. At that point, the Navy dispatched a helicopter to rescue him, but the rescue team had a hard time getting to him because the wind from their copter blades kept pushing his home-made contraption farther and farther away. Eventually, they were able to hover above him and drop a rescue line, with which they gradually hauled him back to safety.

As soon as Larry got his feet on the ground, he was arrested.  But as he was led away in handcuffs, a television reporter called out, “Sir, why’d you do it?” Larry stopped, eyed the man, then replied nonchalantly, “A man can’t just sit around!”

 A man can’t just sit around . . . and neither can the Church. Get up people! You are give to fly, so fly.

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