Bright Constellations & Safe Landings

Driving home at night I cross the 14th Street Bridge over the Potomac River, which unknown to most is officially named for Rochambeau, the French general who helped Washington defeat the British at Yorktown. To the south down river I often a see a constellation of lighted airplanes in the dark evening sky as they approach for landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport. Looking straight on, from a perpendicular angle, the planes seem almost one atop another. But a wide distance actually separates them, as they stretch for many miles in a line along the Alexandria coastline and farther towards Mount Vernon.

After I exit onto the George Washington Parkway in Virginia heading towards the airport and afterwards parallel to their pathway I see them horizontally. From the bridge, looking at them nose head on, they together seem to hover above almost endlessly. Viewed horizontally, they zip by, barely watchable for more than few seconds. They seem to jet forward in an inexorable straight line. But having often landed at the airport from the south, I know the landing is sometimes bumpy, with apparent air pockets causing last minute jolts just moments before landing.

Yet they all land safely. Reagan National sits on a very small artificially created peninsula jutting into the Potomac. It was built in the 1930s to replace the even smaller and more precariously placed Hoover Airport, which stood where the Pentagon is today. At Hoover, I’m told, cars on the surrounding road sometimes had to stop to allow planes landing or taking off to pass. The new airport was partly built on Abingdon estate, which belonged to Martha Washington’s family, her grandson George Washington Parke Custis living there before building Arlington estate in what is now Arlington Cemetery, later made famous by the ownership of his son-in-law Robert E. Lee. Martha would stop at Abingdon in route north to be with her husband during the war or presidency. Abingdon’s ruins are still there, surrounded now by airport parking garages. Martha’s husband, George, likely would be pleased by the airport’s proximity to his own home. He was obsessed with unlocking a then vast, forested continent with better transportation.

Martha hated dangerous ferry crossings across rivers, and the Potomac must certainly have been no exception. She’d be amazed at the seeming ease with which millions of people across more than 75 years have landed safely at the little slip of land on which the airport sits, surrounded by Potomac. The only mishap I recall is the 1982 Air Florida disaster, in which a departing plane, not having been de-iced properly, slammed into the 14th Street Bridge. Otherwise, these planes endlessly approach, guided by amazing technology, wise piloting and presumably good verbal counsel from the control tour. These massive machines, weighing thousands of tons, could meet easy, swift calamity, resulting in death for scores or hundreds, if misguided by only a few yards. How crucially important clear instruction, verbal and technological, is for a safe landing. The seemingly endless cascade of planes with their blinking lights that float over the Potomac at night is quiet beautiful but represents a complicated, great triumph of precision guidance developed over the last century.

Precision guidance is even more vital spiritually. The Church, when performing correctly, is somewhat like an airport control tower, exuding instructions that offer a straight and safe landing for all human souls that place faith in her guidance. There might be bumpy turbulence, but if the plane heeds the proper instruction, all will land safely. In our current postmodern age, there is obsession with novelty, autonomy and self-narrative. Ostensibly there is no precise instruction suitable for all. Each has her or his own story and chart. No meta-narrative can be imposed on everyone. If pilots operated accordingly, the Potomac would be littered with plane wreckage.

The Savior spoke of a straight and narrow path leading to life. The wide and easy way leads to destruction. It’s true for souls. It’s certainly true for Reagan National Airport, where passengers naturally expect their pilot to follow the straight and narrow. If Christ’s Body, The Church, is to be at least as faithful as an airport control tower, its teaching must be consistent, faithful, true, direct, certain and unconfused. It might be amplified or adjust depending on weather conditions, but its core cannot be amended.

More than just planes are at stake. Millions of souls are in the balance. Of course, the secular world in all times and places resents or at least chafes at The Church’s clear teaching for a safe descent. And many within the wider church are embarrassed by and futilely try to amend The Church’s adamant radar emission for precision landing. But as Peter said to Jesus: “Where else can we go? You have the words of life.” Souls that heed those words will ultimately appear as the bright lights of descending planes over the Potomac, like a seamless constellation across a dark sky, safely reaching their destination.