The Sky (Gabrielle)
June 8, 2009 by sharppointythings
(I wrote this last Sunday sitting on ground at the river. I’m not entirely sure where it came from, but I know it’s been inside for a while.)
I wish I could write about the sky. The sky touches me in a way that bypasses concious thought. It’s like guitar music or dance or the smell of campfire. It reaches past what I think about it and makes me feel.
I fell in love with the sky when I moved out here. See, there’s just not as much of it in Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania there’s lot of land. It rises and falls, it rolls and the horizon is just a nice idea. When I moved out here, out to the prairie, I started understanding the sky.
There is so much of it. It’s too big to put your arms around and too wide to fit into a mold. The sky can be blue like my nephew’s eyes or gray like a bad mood. It can be so clear you could almost see into Heaven or so full of clouds that you just want to go get a ladder tall enough and go build a house on them.
The only other thing I know that touches me like the sky is my lake. My lake. Not just any lake. I’ve been to the Atlantic ocean and it was nice, but it was everyone’s. I stood on that beach and felt the crowd. But there’s a spot I liked to go to where the lake could be mine. You feel the wind after its had time to dance over a large distance. The sun reigns supreme where there is no shade and the water moves like a mother quieting her child. And that is where you can see the horizon.
At the horizon water and sky meet and kiss. Some days the line between Heaven and Earth blurs at the horizon. If I swim long enough and hard enough I could cross that line and be in the sky swimming over the ground. I’d swim with the stars as they dance over the water. I’d drink the moon’s water and finally feel refreshed. And with all the constellations hanging in the sky maybe I wouldn’t feel lonely.
But see, I can’t talk about the sky unless I start with something else. I can’t just launch into the sky. My feet are stuck on the ground and I can flap my arms all I want but the sky remains ever out of my reach.
This is beautiful writing. Thank you for sharing it. I don’t mean to impose any meanings upon what you’ve written, but I think that your experiences somewhat mirror what the sky here and the lake in Erie make me feel. Erie is less my home than it is yours, but I’ve gotten to the point where I feel like I haven’t truly visited home if I haven’t made a short trip to Presque Isle or the bayfront. As for Peoria, it never feels like home here, but I am always awestruck by the sky when I’m driving around the Illinois countryside.
The sky and the lake give me a sense of eternity that I usually don’t feel elsewhere. Sometimes they make me melancholic because I feel so small, insignificant, and alone. Other times they remind me of how great God is and how vast and rich life will be when I am on the other side of eternity with Jesus.
The sky and lake make me thankful for a God who is loving enough to give us a world that is full of variety and for how He uses it to remind us of Him. I don’t think I would love Jesus as much if He had fashioned the world in a manner that didn’t engage my emotions.
That was really beautiful. It made me miss the lake so much. But I do really love the sky here too. Especially when it is filled with large streaks of lightning!
I like sky – big sky. I remember being awestruck by the big sky and flat expanse of land when I was in Texas. But home for me will always be a place with hills and trees. Even when I lived in the urban jungles of Pittsburgh, there were trees. Sky is a nice place to visit, though.
And Crystal, lightning over the lake…an amazing sight just a few blocks from my doorstep.