Clouds, Invisible Stuff, and Hugs

I've got a thing for clouds.  I'm not sure if it's a season of life or a result of where I live, but recently I have been totally awed by the sky.  There is an off-ramp that I travel daily; the clover-leaf kind where you're driving in one direction, get off at the exit, go around about 360 degrees and end up traveling on a different road going approximately same direction you were before.   The thing that has caught my attention though is the circular motion.  It sort of makes me feel like Julie Andrews in Sound of Music, with my hands thrown up in the air, spinning around and around in the Austrian Alps.  (No worries, I do manage to keep my hands on the wheel. Unless Building 429 is on the radio...but that's a whole 'nother story.)

It's the....hugeness, the immensity (that's a word, right?),the enormity, the grandness ......the words just aren't big enough!  The sky is amazing.  I know that South Carolina isn't "Big Sky Country" but it certainly has seemed like it lately.  Sometimes it feels like you could just reach your hand out and run your fingers through the fluffy white clouds.  But then I stop and consider and realize how far away they really are.  Truthfully, they could be anywhere from 1 to 4 MILES up in the sky.  But they feel so close.  (cue Rich Mullins music ♫ Sometimes the night was beautiful/ Sometimes the sky was so far away/ Sometimes it seemed to stoop so close/ You could touch it but your heart would break ♫  Ok, enough of that...)  I imagine it's like going in to the Sistine Chapel and seeing all those paintings.  Or a planetarium and seeing all those stars.   You reach out, but it's not there.  It's farther than it seems.

I used to teach the water cycle to middle school students.  In one of the training classes I attended, I was introduced to a water cycle activity that turned out to be one of my favorite parts of 9 years of teaching.  There were brown paper lunch bags around the room labeled with a location (cloud, mountain, river, etc.) and inside were slips of paper describing a particular part of the water cycle and instructions on what location to go to next.  The students ended up with individual stories about their "life" as a water droplet.  Being taken in by kelp and transpired into the air sounded like fun.  Falling as snow onto the ocean?  Oh yeah.  Having an animal drink you up, then urinate you into the ground....not so much.  Well, maybe the boys found that one amusing.  It was always interesting to me to hear the final stories, written and read by students.  As unique as the students themselves, the paths of these fictitious water droplets fascinated me.  How often do we stop to think about the air and water that surround us?  Until recently, quite frankly, I don't know that I did.  Ever.  But when you stop and think about it; we're surrounded.

We stand on a ball of dirt and rock, hanging in space, surrounded by the life-giving qualities of something we can't always see.  Air.  Unless you live in Los Angeles, we generally can't see it.  We don't register its pressure on our skin.  We simply take it in and breathe it out.  Hundreds of times an hour; thousands of time a day.  Usually without thought.  The earth is enclosed by and protected by life-sustaining air.  Without it there wouldn't be a single living thing on this planet.  No people.  No animals.  No plants.  Just rocks & dirt.  (And as much as I like rocks & dirt, even those aren't very interesting without the living stuff around them.)  The air is just....there.  Always.  The atmosphere surrounds the planet and  every person on it like a hug from our favorite person.  Comforting sometimes.  Playful others.  Maybe even sometimes that kick-in-the-pants we need..  It's not always gentle. But it is always there. 

When I stand outside and look up in the sky, the clouds remind me that they aren't there by themselves. They are up there hanging out with the air. They are the visible reminder to me of something (and Someone) that is there whether I see it or not.  Something that sustains me. Something I need.  The atmosphere that hugs the earth, and brings me life.  


So the next time you walk outside, take a moment to look up.  Check out the clouds.  And consider yourself hugged.

"Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made;

Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky."