Air Show

Yesterday was Memorial Day, 2004. I'm in favor of Memorial Day, and not just because I happen to be a veteran. Memorial Day was originally known as Decoration Day because of the flowers and other decorations placed on the graves of those who had died in the Civil War, but I suppose the name changed partly with more wars and partly with changes in the culture. Even the date has succumbed to the vagaries of our ever changing culture.

One of the victims of that is what we do with the day itself. As I said, the idea originally was to honor the Civil War dead by placing flowers or other decorations on their graves. That takes one to the actual grave one is decorating, and theoretically one would read the inscription. Whether the person was known to them in life or not, at least the name probably now was and the reality that a person had died for their country would have been hard to miss.

Today we do have a moment of remembrance, the president does place a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and some people do pause at least briefly to think of the sacrifice so many have made. But we also use the day as an excuse to display our military might and in a sense celebrate war. Ends of wars are worth celebrating, while the act of war, it seems to me, is not.

But let me get to the point of my story. Memorial Day was observed on Sunday, and it happened that on that Sunday my wife and I, along with family members from out of town, went to one of our favorite breakfast/lunch spots after church. This restaurant happens to be at a public golf course, and it happens to overlook a very large pond. The pond is a safe haven for all kinds of water fowl, including ducks, geese, coots, and a kind of bird I don't know the name of but am enamored with all the same.

On this particular Sunday there was an air show at nearby Moffett Field. The headliners that day were the Thunderbirds from the U.S. Air Force. Six amazing jet planes flying in incredible formations at unbelievable rates of speed. No doubt it takes a great deal of training to pilot one of those planes, and those who were flying them were very, very good. We didn't pay to get in to the show, but we could see a lot of it from our seats on the restaurant patio.

At the same time we could see these amazing birds. I once thought they were swallow-tailed kites, but my research tells me those don't make it this far west. (I did see several of them while in the Everglades earlier this year, and they are beautiful.) Anyway, whatever these birds were they easily captured the attention of anyone who would watch them. They would soar over the pond, keeping a keen eye on the water. When they spotted some food they would (individually) hover about 12 - 15 feet above the water and then dive straight down into hte water, and if they hit the target in a brief moment they'd be up again and ready to go.

So which was the better air show? For me it was God's air show. It was free, it was fun, it was never boring, and it somehow honored God much more, I think, than airplanes painted underneath to look like birds.

-Lewis