Monday, July 22, 2013

Musings at 10,000 feet

Written on my iPod.


Airplanes are amazing.
When I'm flying in one, I always try for a window seat so I can watch the plane leave the ground. Even when I'm not by the window, often I feel carefully to determine exactly when the roaring engines overcome gravity and the wheels lift from the pavement. And as the smudged window reveals more and more of the town below, whether small or large, smoggy and sprawling or shrouded in the shadow of the mountains behind it. As suspended billows of water take place of ant-like cars and minuscule steeples of churches, I am struck by the fervency of the human race. We are constantly seeking something in everything we do. Tenacity is an inherited trait of God's, I suppose. There is an intensity to everything, in the bigness of small things and the smallness of big things. And we are never totally satisfied with it all, craving something more substantial. It's like a part of us knows that we are mere ghosts.
It 's black outside and I know not where we are or if we're landing soon. But I know that I am doing something previously impossible not too long ago, and that I am still able to forget that I am ten thousand feet above the ground. Yet the plane lurches on the wind, and I am gripped by a primal terror that itches for solid earth and not the lurching carpet below my heels.
Hold on, there's a brilliant sunset out there. All that darkness was worth it!
My camera isn't very good. Psh. Oh well. I can see the city lights below. Thousands of people are out in the neon cacophony, having reckless fun and trying to get home and sleeping alone when they ought not be. They are seeking something and some of them will never find it. I may never find it. But I will get glimpses of it, reminders of what I was created to be. What we all were created to be. And I will hold onto those moments that awe me. The sunsets above the horizon, the faces of strangers meeting my eyes with that terrifying curiosity, an excellent story that moves me to tears and clutches my throat from within. I am both hugely tiny and minutely massive because of the goodness in me, but I am nothing more than a girl with a spotty face and wind blown hair because of the bad. I am between world much of the time, but I am going home to people who love me and show me parts of themselves that not everyone can see. And I am thankful.

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