Flight Dreams Quotes

“It has been that long since all the moral crises of his youth were washed clean. Suddenly gone were all the ethical dilemmas and doctrinal controversies and denominational nitpicking, all the guilt and doubts and complications that had cluttered his life. Years and years have passed since the realization formed in his brain and finally screamed to him with the voice of reason and logic and common sense—the voice that would be heard—that he simply no longer could believe in the existence of God. He’s been free that long. Why, he wonders, did it not happen sooner? Santa Claus died for him when he was six. The unwelcome knowledge that the benevolent old giver of gifts was merely a myth came as a disappointment, of course, but he soon got over it, knowing even then, even that young, that a grasp of reality—seeing things the way they are, not simply as one would like them to be—was ultimately far more satisfying, more liberating than living a game, living a lie. Things fit. If Santa died so painlessly when Manning was six, how did God manage to linger for another twenty years?”
― Michael Craft, Flight Dreams