Readers of a certain age might remember the silly TV show The Flying Nun…religious brothers and sisters who take flight are nothing new.
When we lived in Wiltshire in England we learned the delightful story from the Middle Ages about Eilmer a Benedictine monk of Malmesbury Abbey who, in the eleventh century, jumped off the tower of the abbey church with some home made wings. Like Icarus he plummeted. The story is related by a monastic…