Wings Not of Fire, But Weak and Feeble

'John said that a hermit saw in a rapture three monks standing on the edge of the sea and a voice came to them from the other side saying, "Take wings of fire and come to me." The first two did so and reached the other shore, but the third stayed where he was crying and weeping. Later on wings were given to him also, not of fire but weak and feeble so that he reached the other shore with great difficulty, sometimes in the water, sometimes over it. So it is with the present generation: the wings they are given are not of fire, they are weak and feeble.'

-The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks (Penguin Books, 2003)

I don't know if Lafferty knew much about the Desert Fathers (at least one story features a group like them - 'And Mad Undancing Bears'), but I think this little vision resonates strongly with what Lafferty was saying and some of how he was saying it. I wonder if a reading of Lafferty would be hugely enriched by reading these and other early church sources. Certainly Teresa of Avila's The Interior Castle had a huge effect on his novel Fourth Mansions. Perhaps Catholic visionary literature is a significant source influencing Lafferty's whole vibe of life-is-bigger-than-you-think-and-here-let-me-show-you. It would make sense as yet another historic root that makes his writing so vastly weird and wonderful and devilishly irascible in a post-Enlightenment world.