more flying away

having flown to seattle via the eastern California/western Nevada route, in clear daylight both ways, the view (obscured by clouds only slightly partway) makes you think of God. I viewed the western Sierras, the Tahoe fire in progress, Crater Lake, Mts. Ranier, St. Helen's and other volcanic wonders from 35,000 feet. It was better than Google Earth, because the progressive sweep of land below shows distinctively just how much volcanic action (from blowouts to mudpots to calderas) we are sitting on top of, glibly going about our tiny ant-like lives.

that was one great kind of flyaway despite the crick in the neck from looking out the window so intently.

the flight through flocks of relatives (not mine but thereby perhaps more accessible), watching them group, socialize, part, fly upward and then settle in various human yet birdlike ways was another kind of flight plan. without a history related to them or to their highly mobile pasts, listening to their stories and reading their documents was a good reminder that the family of the fifties was for many, just that. between the divorces (simple "grass widowhoods" in those days), the migrations of the late 1800s previous to those divorces, the leavings and the returnings while children were left temporarily at the poorhouse (a practical and previous answer to AFDC)...through the stories of the pony express riders, the navy swabs, the infamous who knew some of the nearly-famous, the periginations of our current lives seem now indeed like small eddies in the far-widening stream (a salmon metaphor writhes its way into this, as well!). we are inexoribly drawn to home, even if we can't remember having lived there.

and soon, those of us who love our dear friend will gather to brainstorm ways by which she can fly away home. this flight will make possible the keeping of a promise made years ago to her beloved dad while at the same time offering to her children opportunities they are not likely to find here. it's not an easy thing to help others take flight, in whatever way that flight is needed. because we sedentary ones, who whine when nothing ever changes, tend to panic when it does! and yet it changes all the time, with that underlying desire for home changing shape and color but yet beckoning to some part of us that must follow.

the flights, the risings to meet that demand of migratory urge, draw us on to settlings in which we find that the places we now rest are perhaps unsavory but perhaps also the best we'll ever do. and so we are left with that call just beyond our hearing that there is more than this. just as those migrators of the past centuries, others today leave all security to be transported in complete trust of untrustworthy individuals out of the faint hope that things will be better on the other side of the world, in another country. Such expressions of our souls tell us there must be more than what we see, something greater than what we're doing, feeling, living right now.

The univeral migratory urge can drive us to do stupid things when we misinterpret it. But when we recognize it for what it is--the urge we all have for a home that does not shift in its truth, does not disappear with the volcanic implosion of our little worlds, does not become a crater of lust or slavery or weariness--we recognize that we are made for an eternity that begins now, today, an eternity which by the grace of God spreads in all directions, until (as it was once put) "we are infintely home."

"i'll fly away, oh glory"...and yet, the flight is already commenced, the glory is already here, if we are willing to rise from our ant-like lives to look to our Creator and begin to lift our wings in the updraft.