Just A Drop In The Bucket List
There are many for whom a bucket list is a place where great hopes are kept alive - a compilation of adventures that, once experienced, would bring meaning and fulfillment to our finite lives. For some, however, they turn out to be the butt cans of life where the embers of our dreams go to be slowly extinguished. For most of my life, I have never consciously considered keeping a bucket list - even after seeing the movie - until I got very close to retirement. I just never felt the need for it.
During the course of my very privileged life, I have seen many dreams come true. I found Christ and redemption at the tender age age of 15, married my high school sweetheart at 19; served my country as an Air Force enlisted man, officer, and government contractor for forty-five years; rose to the top of the corporate ranks; set foot on most of the civilized world; and found my forever home on Florida’s Emerald Coast. Whatever dreams might have been fodder for a bucket list, I had already been living out every day. “Living the dream” could be the title of my biography, and yet there was always that one wish that would not stop bouncing around in the back of mind – learning to fly.
I have been a student of general aviation since I was 27 years old, when I enrolled in my first flight school at the Eglin AFB Aero Club in 1985. I took my first solo flight at Bob Sikes Airport in Crestview that same year, but soon after I put flying on the back burner, as my wife, Susan - a new mom - put her foot down about this “dangerous” expensive hobby.
During the course of the next 37 years, I intermittently trained at three different flight schools, but the rigors of my jobs, business travel, and the expense of flying always seemed to keep me on the ground. As an Air Force officer, I applied for pilot training four times, but was never accepted because of childhood allergies I have long-regretted disclosing. When I left the Air Force to become a government contractor, the dream of flying went with me and I logged more than one and a half million miles on Delta Airlines, unfortunately, none of them from the cockpit.
Then I retired, and I wondered if I might finally be able to pull this off. I started checking out flight schools in our area, but never found anyone who seemed to take seriously the idea of some 61-year old fool learning to fly. It was a little discouraging, until I remembered that episode of the Andy Griffith Show where Aunt Bea took flying lessons. I figured if she could do it, so could I. So, I trudged ahead and discovered AMS Flight School at Peter Prince Airport in Milton, Florida, where they took me very seriously and connected me with two great instructors who would ultimately lead me through the two courses of study for my Private Pilot Certificate and my Instrument Rating.
The requirements to become a pilot aren’t really all that daunting. You must be at least seventeen years old. Check. You must be proficient in English. I am from Alabama, but still, check. You must take a ground school course and fly forty or more hours, most with an instructor but some solo, some at night and some cross country. Check. You must pass a physical given by an FAA-licensed medical examiner. Hmm, I was really close on this one. Just needed to lose weight, get my blood pressure under control, lower my blood sugar, change my allergy medicines, buy new glasses and replace one knee. Add in the interruptions of Covid and hurricane Sally and it took about a year and a half and a hundred flying hours to obtain my coveted license - about twice as many as the average student – but I got it.
So, bucket list empty, right? After all, when I started this adventure, the one drop in my bucket list was simply to fulfill the lifelong dream of becoming a pilot. By the time I did, however, I found many new droplets had formed. So, I am back at AMS working on my Commercial Pilot’s Certificate, and I hope to spend my retirement years teaching people to fly. I have a long way to go and so much more to learn but, in my opinion, that’s one of the greatest benefits of flying.
If there is one consistent lesson I have learned about flying it is this - you never stop being a student. It’s what I love most about it. If you are like me, you will find the most frightening prospect of taking up the rocking chair is the lost challenge of learning new skills and forging new trails. When we stop learning, we stop living. As the unknown philosopher reminds us, “Adventure may hurt you, but monotony will kill you.”
That very same tag line can be applied to our Christian life. Despite its prominence on my bucket list, I did not retire so I could learn to fly. I retired so I could devote my full attention to our church, and God has allowed me to do just that for the past three and a half years. As I have grown older, I find my bucket list items are much less focused on me experiencing the world, and much more focused on me helping the world experience Christ. As I have grown in this direction, God has given me a new dream to pursue – one so large as to fill the entire bucket with a single drop. Acts 2:17 says, “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.” Well, this old man’s dream is to see the Church earn back the right to be the first place where people seek answers to their problems.
Where will I start to pursue this dream? I think I’ll start in my own heart. Like many of you, I find elements of our culture very difficult to stomach and, like many of you, I don’t always respond to it in the most effective ways. That’s true - from my perspective - of the Church, as well. Andy Crouch, Author and Praxis Labs Partner for Theology, identifies four responses to the culture that have not only failed to bring about change, but have damaged the Church’s credentials to be the purveyor of Christ’s love and grace in the world.
The first is to condemn the culture. He calls this an “amazingly inert” option because condemnation never compels anyone to change. The second is to critique it – respond with ideas about how Christians should, and mostly should not, engage in the culture (don’t drink, don’t smoke, etc.). The problem is that critique is often based on analysis that is not universally accepted, so it is often ignored. The third is to copy it – wait for the world to do something and then come along and add a Jesus layer to it. The best example is probably Christian music, which is not a bad thing, but copying usually leaves the Church woefully behind the culture and always on the edge of irrelevance. The last and most pervasive response today is simply to consume it – accommodate the culture for our own pleasure and satisfaction, which only entrenches it further.
I am determined to put these responses behind me – to stop screaming at the TV when sin is celebrated in my face, to stop telling others how they should live, to stop appropriating the world’s methods and standards in an attempt to be relevant, and stop consuming the very things I want to see disappear in the world. Instead, I want to make a greater effort to mirror Jesus, bless people, renew the culture, and die to self. It seems to me the best first step toward changing the culture and restoring the Church to its intended place among humanity is for me as an individual to exercise the power God has given each of us through our creation in His likeness to create new elements of culture that will promote His purposes and to cultivate those that already do.
So, I guess it’s true after all - revival starts in me. God didn’t just give me a pilot’s certificate. He gave me the desire for it, along with the determination and strength to change and do my part to earn it. In that same way and by His grace, I have, as Elvis Presley once said, “lived every dream I have ever had a hundred times.” I expect the same will be true for this dream. It's a big dream I know, but I have a big bucket and an even bigger God.
Cal Vandivier is the head of our finance committee, a lay delegate to our Annual Conference, and a licensed pilot.