| Sunny Side Up! April 4, 2001 Copyright 2001, Kathleen Gibson Getting Above it All One last hug, a final wave, a slow taxiing down the runway and minutes later, the gentle pressure of liftoff tucked me cozily in my seat. I turned to look out. Mountainous banks of cumulous clouds hovered overhead. Directly below, pocket-sized white cars moved rapidly back and forth over four paperclip curves in a road that straightened after the last bend, returned to the starting point, and began again. Some kind of training run, I realized. That much seemed clear from my heightened viewpoint. Those snarled city streets just beyond it held no stress for me - I didn't have to negotiate them. The houses - matchboxes from above, hiding lives, loves, and life, complete with tangles and snarls; we soared over them too, and the lofty office towers, factories, and seats of power... everything fit in the rounded square of my airplane window. Even the Rockies seemed anaesthetized by my altitude, their snow-stroked granite creases and folds deceptively benign. It seemed a very small world after all. I didn't see the cloudbank until fog, dense as a quilt bat, enfolded us. Its dampness seemed to seep through the window at my side. The plane shuddered and shimmied, but its needle nose tilted up, pierced the batting, and finally leveled out under a dome so perfectly blue only pure innocence could have colored it. The sun glinted gold off the silver wing of the plane - so bright the looking was difficult. Minutes later, the cloudcloth thinned, yawned open. Prairie farmfields in winter shades were spread tidily below like a grandmother's guest room coverlet, waiting to be turned back by the warm hand of visiting spring. The sloughs, slowly thawing, wore perfect circles of deep blue at dead center. Creeks and rivers - mere worm tracks from above - doodled among wee swells of land, as though they chose to leave the map at home, and just make a day of finding their own way. The plane touched down, earth resumed its bigness, but I needed that reminder. A higher view can restore the soul�s order in the midst of life�s perplexities. Often I head into the woods alone, or sit by a lake, soaking in the silence. Or simply stay home and deliberately make myself still for a few hours - no intrusions allowed, electronic or otherwise. I make time for concentrated listening prayer, not the more usual stream of chatter I direct into the ears of the Almighty. Time to find that small square of window through which everything is brought into perspective by the recognition that God sees a bigger picture than the mazes and mountains that stand in my way. To remember that my life and our world is securely in his hands. To be reassured that above the clammy, heaving cloud there is blue and gold, so blue and gold that the looking is difficult. And that should not be surprising, because therein can be found the face of God. |