“2 And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. Wisdom from the Spirit 6 Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. 7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— 10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. 14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.” (1 Cor 2:1-16 ESV)

To talk tough, to talk business, to talk antics and tactics: this is a bit of a walk on air. It is a bit of—say some—a foolhardy business, thus to leave so much to airy chance. That is, suppose we needed to lower ourselves a bit, to find a solid cloud to lean on… would there even be one? But our Reality, it is no hallucinatory style of thought, but a Construction earned in the trenches, where the soldier’s war is True and Probing, Real and non-Imagined.

If others yawn and prevaricate a bit, we are the Family True, fortunate—yes—but gameday down to business as well. We crash land and thrive on the supportive words of each other, born in the trenches, living in our Air Castle, high in the sky: it is, after all, for real. It is, after all, a hundred chattering voices bringing good cheer to our alone time: the prayers of the Saints, that is.

For, not voices quite, but Possibilities in sync and with gladsome interplay, these things they continue to Cheer, even as facts, boots on the ground, grounded Sagacious sanity, does show a slower cadence. Slower and more impossible, the Truth we seek to ground ourselves in. O Soldier, what is your Today Lesson, and Today Reaction Plan, Action Plan? How to cope with a world not swirling in joyous cadence up and towards Heaven? How to respect each other’s personal prerogative to Decide and Focus, to interpret… hey, we are not so different after all. We are cut from a joyous fabric, the cloth of our lives being intertwined with the machinations of Minds always-on.

To walk, once more, on “air” is again a theoretical banditry or cavalcade, that is a theoretical Coup: to Dream and to place here or there, to Startle unto alert reaction, to murmur gratitude and goodness, to do all this completely oblivious to the downward scope or tug of the world on all sides. The world… so today we invent, were it not already invented, Original Sin. We realize that all good things come to an end, and that our Passion, our Theology, it must be a bit more subdued, a bit more reaching and surviving on Hope Alone. Yet also we shall never Tire of the camaraderie and the good vibes, the “Walk on air” dreamscape.

Therefore, as bastions of the solitary one’s Thoughts, meet “Safer” conversation topics, we have that joint Genius or Excitement, simply of affections shown and lifespring tapped into. This we save for one another, because many months and years and decades and quarter centuries can pass by on a few wings and a prayer. When we fear that pinion after pinion is blanking, absenting itself, going Gone: it is not some grand scheme we are fighting against, but against the slow grind of Time. Those who have already submitted to the notional you-get-what-you-get Authority: these have a luxury not afforded to all, for some… no matter their willingness to Submit… some have not the response of gratitude for said submission, rather like a racially different or culturally different Entity, they will find no safe harbor, no matter their attempts to get along.