LANDING PLACES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20058, 22 September 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

LANDING PLACES.

MEETING OPPORTUNITY. 351* MATANGA. Tho great white bird that lately flew the Tasman, steered in its flight by Kingsford Smith and his merry men, alighted at Sockburn by deliberate choice. Oil the way it took a circle over Wellington, but not even the fact that below lay this country's capital—Governor, Prime Minister, Parliament—could induce it to come to earth there. Little Blenheim, however, is to share with a spot on the outskirts of Christchurch the proud joy of intimacy with it, what time it pauses for a while ere it sets out again across tho sea. Auckland it does not deign to visit at all, albeit this city is the largest in tho Dominion. The explanation of this enjoyment by Sockburn and Blenheim of what Wellington and Auckland aro denied is simple and sufficient —landing places. Never was more suggestive parable. It holds tho key-truth of all that matters in this world. For lack of landing places men—hero and there, now and then — have missed the good they needed, even the good they wished. Sings Stevenson— Tho world ia so full of a number of things, I am sure wo should all bo as happy as kings. It is; but many of 11s aro as miserable as bandicoots. Of little avail to us is it that all about are splendours and joys if we have no place of lodgment for them. They are not splendours and joys for us. Experience depends on capacity as much as on opportunity, and the tragic fact is that we often fail to develop the capacity, and so the experience must needs pass us by. The vast empyrean may bo thronged with beauty and beatitude, yet, lacking adequate runways and hangars, our lives are unvisited. Some of the things that hover may be mischievous and menacing, 110 doubt, and to refuse to provide facilities for their alighting is a brave defiance. Luther's " I cannot keep the birds from flying over my head, but I can keep them from making their nests 111 my hair" is a word of good counsel. So is another's proud assertion: " The prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me." But Stevenson's gay-hearted gospel is true: good approaches in vut.ged multitude, and only our own neglect to hail and house it robs us of the boon we might have had. The banquet tarries because we havo not spread the table. The harvest generously promised in sunshine and shower is lacking because we have had no patience to till and plant. No guest-chamber is ready for the heavenly visitant, no door on the latch to welcome a beneficent touch, and gloom is within where happiness might come. The drift of pinions, would we hearken. Beat? at our own clay-shuttered doors; but the chance passes on—no landing place. We aro neglectful of the things that belong to this our day, and too often abide amid self-created poverty and paltriness. The pity of it—and tho blame! Discovery, not Invention. Tho blame? Most certainly. It is idle for Auckland to curse its luck that it has no landing place for the Southern Cross. For years it has been as sure as anything could be that aviation would look for scope in this land, even that airmen would cross tho Tasman; yet this city, like most places in the Dominion, was not moved to practical enthusiasm as it should have been. It could have virtually compelled the Government to act; it could have done much itself. Years went by in idle day-dreams. Now, in the fact that the Southern Cross cannot alight here is impressed, with telling irony, the truth that chickens come home to roost. Tho parable holds at this point. That our lives have but scant landing places for the true, the beautiful, the good, is mostly our own fault. Out of the circumstances of life good is waiting to come. We have it not, because our capacity for it is indolently undeveloped. Man, we think, is inventtivc. The current use of that word is misleading. There are really no_ inventions: they aro all discoveries. Natures resources are boundless. They are everywhere. Only where somo brave and diligent soul prepares a place for them do they coino to be known and used. Watt and Stephenson did not invent tho power in expanding vapour; they made a landing place for it. 1' ranklin did not create electricity; his kite-string only brought it to earth. Edison does not make; he puts things together so that out of the infinite sources of energy some new-found manifestation of it may alight. Wireless is no human gift to the ether; it is a gift from the ether, available for untold years past but accepted only when man laid down the runway for it. bo tho story goes, always and everywheiQ, Even the ineffable Son of >J.an could not come until there was " a body prepared, and tho graces of His strong and gentle spirit find no expression to-day save where a landing place is got ready and placed at their disposal. All that Geneva is trying to do is of this self-same orderto make a dwelling-place on earth for the majestic righteousness that springs c\er from the heart of the Etci ual. " Capability." Let us get back to fundamentals. "Capability" is but ability to take. "Capacity" is not ability to do so much as ability to receive. Tho forces resident about us havo piped for ages unheeded, until some soul at length heard and danced. There were glories in sky ana sea long before the first artist painted. The well-known story of the lady who could not see in nature the things lurner painted 111 his pictures points the continual moral. Gladstone's assertion that eloquence is found in the hearer and the proverbial saying that beauty is 111 the beholder speak the truth of the landing place. Barrie expressed it in his dictum —" Love is eyes." There is a letter of James Smetham, Buskin's friend, in which the landing place is called by a good name. 1 have found the art of finding how to cot thought out of books, out of men out of things," he says;" I have learned the art of appreciation. lhat is itappreciation; and it is an art to bo learned, a preparedness acquired by diligence for the entry of things-to be discovered. not made. Among Sydney Smith's last words was one likejt 1 have lived with my windows open. But long before them both stands Plato s eager and solemn longing—" I must be careful not, to lose the eye of my soul. It can be lost; it can be trained. . 0 exercise and employ it well is to provide a portal for the crowding joys of art and litcratuie and religion that, but for its welcome, must pass by. No Magic Word. * Ali Baba, the woodcutter of old renown, was at work in tho forest when he saw a troop of men come to a rocky cliff that seemed to bar their path. Open, sesame,' the leader cried, and an opening appeared in the rock. They passed in through the mysterious door, and it closed on them. Some hours later it opened again. They came out. "Shut, sesame, the leader said, and it shut. So 'Ali Baba, to test the talisman for himself, went near as soon as the band of men had gone. At his "Open, sesame," the stony door flew open and he went in to behold the treasure. But no magic word can bring man to tho storehouse of his life, only the magic sweat of brain and sinew. This "lie must spend to make an entry to delights. Yet in the ancient tale is this measure of truth —tho treasure awaits discovery and it is near at hand, close by his daily task. More rhan that, it is seeking him. Yet he and it can never meet until he gives it a chance to manifest itself To believe so ardently in it that he accepts the constraint to do this is the lesson of the prepared landing place, nowhere better taught than in this poignant vignette of Scripture—" And lie did not many mighty works thcie, because of their unbelief."