London Dawn (59 page)
Authors: Murray Pura
Their Spitfire banked when the wing commander and the squadron leaders banked, and fifty aircraft followed suit. There was the Channel blazing like a bonfire. There was the shore. There were the green fields over which the planes of one nation had fought the planes of another nation until freedom had been wrested from the smoke-torn skies.
“Ah, Elizabeth, Elizabeth, I wish you were with me. You would never come, but I wish you were in the cockpit at my side. A price was paid for freedom by our family. Just as God paid a price, just as His Son paid a price, for a greater freedom. Lives were not lost, no, they were not lost forever. Not lost forever and not in vain, never in vain, my dear. The Lord grant you peace in your deepest heart. The Lord grant us peace and an incomprehensible joy in the midst of the titanic struggle of these years, indeed, the struggle of our lives.”
The R/T hummed. “You all right back there, Dad?”
“Never better. Thank you again for bringing me up here to see all the squadrons together. It truly is astonishing.” Lord Preston gazed out at the mixture of blue sky, flashing wings, and dazzling light. “You were going to recite the rest of the poem.”
“What’s that?”
“The poem you started. You were going to finish it.”
“Finish it for yourself, Father. You’ll find it in your jacket pocket.”
Lord Preston dug around and came up with a small piece of paper. “This isn’t your handwriting, Kipp.”
“Caroline’s actually. Apparently mine wasn’t quite up to snuff.”
Lord Preston held the note as steadily as he could and read it. He closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the seat.
“Praise You,” he whispered.
“What say, Dad?”
“I say, let’s fly, my boy. Fly. Go higher and go farther and don’t stop, never stop, never dream of stopping.”
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue,
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew—
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
—Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
Murray Pura
earned his Master of Divinity degree from Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and his ThM degree in theology and interdisciplinary studies from Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. For more than twenty-five years, in addition to writing, he has pastored churches in Nova Scotia, British Columbia, and Alberta. Murray’s writings have been short-listed for the Dartmouth Book Award, the John Spencer Hill Literary Award, the Paraclete Fiction Award, and Toronto’s Kobzar Literary Award. In 2012 he won the Word Award of Toronto for Best Historial Novel. Murray pastors and writes in southern Alberta near the Rocky Mountains. He and his wife, Linda, have a son and a daughter.
Visit Murray’s website at
www.murraypura.com
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