Elder Patrick Kearon of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles opened with humor. A few weeks earlier, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, the Church’s best-known aviator, took him aside: Patrick, your talks, they’re okay, but where’s the aviation? “So here’s just a little aviation.”
He spent much of his childhood at boarding school in England, watching airplanes overhead and dreaming of flying home to my parents thousands of miles away in Arabia. He wanted to be a fighter pilot, and the fastest route was learning to glide. A glider is a lightweight aircraft with long slender wings and no engine that stays aloft by riding within rising currents of air. In his mid-teens he spent parts of two summers at an Oxfordshire airfield, first learning to fly straight, make stable turns, take off behind a tow plane, and land safely. Only then was he ready to learn to stay up, climb, and soar.
“The crucial skill in gliding is finding rising air. You cannot see it, but you can see what it does.” Cumulus clouds often mark rising warm air, so he learned to fly toward them. “But even more important than using visual cues to find rising air is to learn to feel it.” He would sense being lifted by an unseen force; a wing would tip upward and he would turn toward it, circling within the column of rising air, often joining other pilots who had found the same lift. “To be flying is fantastic, but climbing in lift and soaring with no engine is almost beyond description,” with only the whistle of the wind and an occasional creak from the glider.
There is also sinking air, helpfully called sink. It can’t be seen but can be felt, and he quickly learned to avoid it. “Gliding into sink can feel like falling, sometimes quickly. It shortens the distance you might fly and may threaten a safe landing.” When he met sink, he learned to turn away decisively.
A decade later, early in his journey of faith, he recognized the parallel: “We must avoid sink and find lift. At the heart of our faith is the glorious truth that we have an adoring Father in Heaven, whose Son, our Saviour, loves to lift!” The scriptures are full of it: Jesus lifted Peter from sinking in the waves (Matthew 14:30–31), lifted Jairus’s daughter from death (Mark 5:41–42), and took the boy who was as one dead by the hand and lifted him up (Mark 9:26–27). “Our Saviour constantly sought out the most desperate souls sinking into darkness and dread and lifted them up. And He wants to lift you!”
Through the grace of Jesus Christ we can avoid spiritual sink and find spiritual lift. It can’t be seen, but as we learn to discern and act on the Holy Spirit’s impressions, we feel it as surely as a wing lifting. He asked us to remember moments of undeniable spiritual lift (where were you, how did it feel?) and moments of spiritual sink, from which we likewise turn away decisively.
Then an uncomfortable fact: in gliding, if you’re not actively climbing in lift, you are descending. The descent can be so gradual you don’t notice unless you watch your altitude. “How easy it is to slowly slip from spiritual heights we have worked so hard to climb when we neglect the practices and behaviours that brought us there.” We rarely intend to sink, but we may not recognize the quiet cost of neglecting vital communion with our Father, Savior, and Holy Spirit.
First experiences of spiritual lift are wondrous, a soul-expanding lightness of being. Ammon, praising God for freeing his brethren from everlasting darkness into everlasting light, captures the move from the ultimate sink to the ultimate lift. Ammon exclaimed, “Behold, who can glory too much in the Lord?” and confessed, I cannot say the smallest part of which I feel (Alma 26:14–16). “The language of the Spirit of God is not a language of words,” but lift and sink are real. Pay attention to the sweet, peaceful feelings of the Savior’s upward pull, and to the dim and dampening feelings that lead away. As children of the covenant, helping others “Helping others turn from sink and into the lift of Jesus Christ is our glorious opportunity and brings joy beyond compare.”
What does living in lift look like? “Find a faithful guide and learn from them where lift is found. Actively tune in to the sweet feelings of the Holy Spirit and the things in your life that lead you there.” Then: “Join those who are climbing. Do what they do. Watch closely for the subtle signs of sink in your own life, and turn away decisively. And when you find lift yourself, show someone else where and how to rise! Then soar in the joy of the Lord!” The Savior promised, “If ye do these things blessed are ye, for ye shall be lifted up at the last day” (3 Nephi 27:22). “None of this is complicated; we simply need to keep turning toward the Saviour, into the source of lift, and keep choosing to rise into the light rather than drift imperceptibly into the shadow.”
He closed by testifying that the Father sent His Son to be lifted up, that thereby he might draw all of us into his loving embrace. Your Savior is your lift. He is your ever-rising air. There is no limit to how high you can climb with him. Jesus Christ lives to lift.
