Coming Home

Between the Clouds

 After almost 3 weeks in New York City (visiting NYSEC), I flew home yesterday.  It was a long day of traveling, and I was already quite weary from a busy, almost non-stop schedule in NYC.  I had to change planes at Love Field.  The flight to Austin was delayed almost an hour.  When we finally got into the air, I was impatient to get home, to get up from having to sit for hours on end, to have some privacy after hours of jostling elbows.

And then we broke through the clouds.

Now I've flown many times in the past and seen many clouds in various parts of the world.  White, fluffy, like a bale of cotton.  Yesterday's clouds seemed, somehow, different.  For once I noticed the layers of clouds, thick and billowing below, thin and wispy above, casting shadows on the shadows.  A massive gray bank in the far distance looking at times like a coming dust storm (like the special effects we see in movies) or far distant mountains (impossible as we fly from Dallas to Austin).  I have never been one to see shapes in clouds, but I even managed to discern several sleeping giants--or at least their faces--in some of the clouds below me.  

It was a wondrous moment, not least because I was aware of both my sense of awe and wonder and the uncurling of tension within.  I (more or less) floated above--and below--the clouds in a liminal state, appreciating the power and the beauty before me and absorbing the peace I felt in those moments.  While not silent, given the drone of the jets, it was a time to be and to heal.  As we flew over those clouds, I was no longer departing from but coming to.  

It's good to be home.