Il cielo
“Train of thought” is such a nice term. Trains run on schedules. They have consistent stations. They don’t stop for any other traffic. They are organized. My thoughts are more like Mrs. Frizzle's school bus. They can shapeshift into anything, go anywhere they please, and run on absolutely no schedule at all. Recently though, they seem to keep coming back to the sky.
First, on a flight home from disney world I got to watch the sunset above the clouds. It was GORGEOUS. I was sitting next to my friend, whom I love, but have never judged more for watching pride and prejudice. While I was glued to the window, takeoff to landing, she closed her eyes for much of it, uncomfortable in the turbulence and preferring to focus on Jane Austin’s masterpiece. But, the sunset! The splendor! After spending a week in a wonderful world of imagination, I sat there thinking about how it was exciting to walk into someone else’s imagination, but how much more beautiful to walk through God’s imagination. The clouds carried a hundred different forms. We traveled through a kingdom, then flew higher where we reached a sea. From there they curled and rolled like a dozen croissants into a pile of pebbles, then higher we flew into a white abyss. We escaped it to emerge in an endless expanse of rippling puffs glowing gold. There was a little volcano, a mighty ship, a giant man with a giant beard laying on his back waiting to watch the sunset on the wispy clouds above him. I was truly transfixed. I did peel my eyes away for a moment. But in that moment my heart sank. As I looked around I realized my window was the only one open on the whole plane. THE ONLY ONE. I wanted to get up and shout. To strangle everyone. To slap them all and push the windows open for them. Then I heard an artificial sound from some child’s IPad. My instant of anger melted into disappointment. That child was watching some man-made, poorly colored, flat game instead of the glowing vapor that engulfed the plane. I just wanted to show them the window. To say, “Look! Look so long and hard you don’t want that game anymore. So long and hard you have to admit something made this all. So long and hard you can’t do anything but praise Him for it, and for showing it to you.”
Then, on a flight from Puerto Rico I once again was glued to my window. This time I was flying over the ocean and as close to space as I think I will ever get. I could distinctly see the layers of the atmosphere, and the clouds that settled in each one. They were no longer masses in the sky, but separate puffs, this one on the bottom, those feathery ones above it, and the haze the highest of all. For a short while we reached a point where there were no clouds at all, and there was just blue. We were so high that the black of space was not dispersed into the pale blue sky, and it appeared as a dark dusk-blue above us. The horizon was lighter, but beneath us the blue became again dark. It was water below separated from the water above, the reason we’re called the blue planet.
Since then, the shutters that once stayed shut all night are now wide open. I wake to the sunrise streaming into my room, and I love it. The way the light fills the sky and bounces off the clouds is different each and every morning. Each night I eagerly await when the sun hides behind the world, and the colors too lazy to stay out all day do their final dance before themselves going to sleep. Every moment in between I find myself looking up. I am always curious how the sky looks. In what position are the clouds, are they dark on a pale sky, or pale on a bright sky? How bright is the sun? How does it feel at this moment? The sky is just so constantly and infinitely new and exciting and magnificent.
All of this really started when a friend and mentor told me he likes cloudy skies better than clear ones. At first I thought him crazy, until I paid attention. The classic desired “clear skies” are overrated. Clouds are ever changing, adding depth and drama to each day’s backdrop. Tonight I was watching the sunset thinking about how without even meaning to he has guaranteed that the rest of my life I will never be able to forget him. He has connected himself to the one thing I can never escape or get away from no matter how hard I try. I will forever be under the sky. Then I had a whole moment coming to terms with the fact that I am stuck under the sky. For a moment it felt restricting, small. I felt like Truman from the Truman Show. I wanted to somehow get out. But I suppose for now I shall remain under the canvas of God’s imagination, and tomorrow I will awake to another new sunrise.