A BOY AND HIS KITE

There was once a very unusual kite named Hope.  You may think it strange that this kite had a name – few kites do.  That is unfortunate.  Every kite deserves a name, it’s part of its’ personality, its’ soul

Anyone who has ever flown a kite knows that kites have minds of their own.  But it’s not always clear that they also have hearts of their own.  Part of the reason for this is that the heart – the soul – of a kite seldom gets cultivated.  It is seldom encouraged to come into its’ own, to blossom forth in its’ full beauty.  It takes time for a heart to unfold itself into the world, and you just can’t rush it.

When you buy a kite at the store, it is all rolled up compactly.  For it to take shape, you have to unroll it, readjust its’ structure and bend it some (but you mustn’t bend it too far or too quickly).  Then you tie it together here and there, and sometimes add a tail for stability.  Then it looks like a kite.

This is what you have to do with the heart of a kite also.  In its’ own way, it needs to be carefully unrolled and stretched out.  It needs to have its’ structure adjusted, bent a little – but not too much – a heart doesn’t unfold itself in the presence of impatience.  And ties need to be established.

Most of the time, unfortunately, a kite doesn’t get this kind of attention.  Many kites therefore never develop a soul.  If a boy hurriedly buys a kite in a store, throws it together hastily to use for an afternoon in the wind before discarding it, there is no interest in cultivating its’ soul.

It turns out that most kites are treated just like that.  They have been purchased in a store, but never had their souls developed.  Nobody bothers to give them names.

But if a boy makes his kite, that is a different matter.  And Hope was very much a homemade kite.  The boy who had created her had seen a picture in a magazine of a beautiful kite.  He was determined to have one like it for his very own.  So he drew the design as well as he could from the picture, bought some good materials and joyfully went to work.

He talked to his kite while he worked on her – that is essential if a kite is to have much of a soul.  A kite is very much like a person in that regard – it never really blossoms unless it is talked to.  He would say things like, “Hope, you are going to be a beautiful kite,” or, “Look how lovely your arms look extended like that,” or “You’re my very own kite, Hope, and I want you to be very special.”

He called her “Hope” from the very beginning, although he didn’t really know anyone named “Hope.”  I don’t even know why he gave her a girl’s name instead of a boy’s name, except that most kites that have names have girl’s names.  Maybe girl’s kites have boy’s names.  I don’t know.  You would have to ask the boys and girls who make them – or maybe ask the birds that fly in the wind along with the kites.  As for Hope, she loved her name, and loved to hear him say it when he talked to her.

Finally, the work was done, and he held her up to admire her.  She looked something like a long slender bird, with graceful wings extended.  He was very pleased and jumped up and down with excitement.  He could hardly wait until the weekend when he could take her to an open field to fly her.

When Saturday came, and he drove to the countryside with his father, he thought of some of the other kites he had made.  For as long as he could remember, he had wanted a kite that was unique, something set apart from all the other kites in the world.  He had thought first of trying to build the largest kite ever.  But when he started reading about kites, he realized that this would be impossible.  People before him had built kites that were really enormous.  Many of them had to be anchored to the earth with steel cables on power-driven winches.

He then thought of trying to build the smallest kite ever.  He even tried this once, ending with a tiny sliver of a thing that was just under an inch long.  But this felt grotesque to him.  It wasn’t really a kite, it was just an oddity.  He threw it away before even trying to fly it.

The uniqueness he sought would have to come from a different source.

It had taken him a long to get the hang of making a kite that was really satisfactory. Most of them hadn’t lasted very long.  A string would break, or a gust of wind would catch one and throw it in a nosedive into a tree, or it would get caught on something.

Once, he had let out every bit of string when a strong gust of wind had caught the kite.  Down it flew!  He ran down wind as fast as he could, hoping to slow its fall, but he couldn’t run fast enough.  Finally, he had to choose.  Would he hold on to the string and hope that at the last second the wind would let up?  Or would he let go of the string and lose the kite altogether?  He chose to hold on, and felt a little guilty when it plunged into a scrubby tree.

No, none of his other kites had had names.

He didn’t like it if a kite was too stable or too unstable.  It alarmed him when a kite immediately starting bolting hither and yon as soon as it was airborne.  He would want to pull it in right away to add more tail.  But if it was too stable, it didn’t seem alive.  It was just there, with him holding a lifeless string.  There was no real sense of interaction.

He really liked it when Dad or a friend would hold the string while he walked the kite out as far as he could downwind – to the very end of the string if possible.  When a little puff of wind came, he would hold her up as high as he could, and then let go, to watch her ascend.

He liked to take a kite down the same way.  He would protect his hand from burning by wrapping a handkerchief around the string.  He would then walk toward he kite, thereby pulling her to earth – bucking, resisting, restraining, like a petulant child being taken to bed.

For Hope’s first flight they went to a nearby lake shore where several fingers of land jutted out into the water.  When the wind blew down the length of the lake and across this point it was smooth and consistent – an ideal setting for the trial flight of a very special kite.  The wind was gentle that day, as if to help. 

Hope took to the air like a bird.  Her movements were not jerky and irregular, but smooth and graceful.  She would glide to one side and then to the other, occasionally swooping down as if playfully thanking him for letting her be there.  He sometimes ran back and forth across the point of land, waiting for her to follow him.  Or he would run forward a few steps and then stop suddenly, looking up to watch the bend of the string slowly travel up to the kite.

Finally he lay down on a patch of grass where he could look up into the sky.  With his head turned a little to the right, his field of vision included the tops of some tall poplar trees growing nearby.  They were his point of reference, and the clouds drifted by in relation to the trees.

But if he stared at the clouds for a while, they became his point of reference!  For a few moments, it felt as though the clouds were stationary as he fixed his eyes on them.  It was the trees that seemed to move, and the earth he was lying on felt as though it was tilting backward.  He loved losing his sense of equilibrium this way. 

He found he could do the same thing if he stared at his kite.  When the wind was very steady for a while, so that the kite was moving slowly and gently, the kite herself would become the reference point.  Everything else seemed to move in relation to her.  He could even feel the earth sway beneath him.  Even the clouds moved erratically back and forth relative to her. 

For those moments, she had become the fixed point in his world, the center.  He could surrender his sense of orientation to her and be caught up in the ecstasy of a whole new orientation to his world. 

In other words, she had become unique.  Her uniqueness had nothing to do with how big or how small she was, nor even how pretty she was, or how different from other kites. No, it had to do with his relation to her, his sense of experiencing his world differently because of her, with her as the reference point.

Anyone who has ever loved will recognize that this is what it is to be in love.  A person is unique because you love her, not the other way around.  This phenomenon is present in other relationships as well, and of course it is the essence of what it means to be a believer.

Although the boy was not old enough or wise enough to express it this way or even to think of it this way, this is what he felt.  He experienced his world differently because of her; he felt the power of her uniqueness.  He loved her.