WINDOW SEAT

I am sitting in a chair in the sky.

It should be magical, but it’s not. Modern air travel is surprisingly wretched. The flights are always full, and I often find myself jammed in a middle seat. I have always been mildly claustrophobic. I don’t like concerts, or crowded clubs or bars. I cannot even sit still in church. Being part of an audience feels like a trap.

But today I have a window seat. I always try to get one when I can. It is usually all the way in the back of the plane on the port side for some reason. I can turn my trapped mind from this crowded capsule to the everlasting sky outside.

It is a clear day and I can see the land 35,000 feet below me. God’s eye view.

We are somewhere over the Midwest. I can tell because the land is flat and farmed. The roads are straight. This leaves the landscape squared off with right angles. Human efficiency. I am looking at a manmade quilted panorama.

I see the rivers flowing through this flatness. They are neither swift nor efficient. They curve and loop and meander like a bored cat. Creation is in no hurry. It cares nothing for our priorities. For us, it is in the way, something to be bridged, then ignored.

The flight attendants have emerged with carts of “complimentary” snacks. I obediently receive my Coke Zero and a packet of two small cookies. We are like dogs crammed into a kennel being fed biscuits to keep us from barking for a few minutes. It works.

I sip my coke, suck on small ice cubes, and return my attention to the Earth. It has changed. The farmland is still there but now there are patches of trees. The woods. I love trees. I always feel surrounded by friends when walking in the woods. I notice a growing cloud below. It takes me a minute to realize what I am seeing. A small forest fire.

Why does God allow this world to burn so often?

Isn’t that what we all want to know?

I can do nothing about the flames. But I have an excuse. I am a single small human sitting in my chair in the sky. But God has no excuse. He could end every conflagration on every world with a thought.

But He doesn’t.

Some things are meant to burn. Let us not be one of them. Most of the fires on this world are lit by us, His wayward children. To extinguish them would mean extinguishing us. That is not the plan. We were not made for the fire. We were made for the family of God. But adoption takes time.

God has no excuses.
God needs no excuses.
He’s God. 

I look up from the smoking land below to my fellow passengers. Most have earbuds in, being entertained by their devices. Movies, podcasts, music, audio books; the number of ways we have to distract ourselves from each other are endless. I don’t mind. I never liked small talk. I am not good at it. Words are heavy to me. Important. Big.

I remember standing in line at a store somewhere in North Jersey. There was a couple standing next to me. A man and a woman, the woman kept looking at me. She finally spoke:

“You look familiar.”
Me: “Oh?”
Her: “Do I know you?”
Me, feeling awkward and hoping she doesn’t: “I don’t think so.”
Her: “You look like someone.” 
Me: “I am someone.” 
Her: “I mean someone famous. Are you famous?”
Me: “Only in my mind.” 
The man, leaning across and offering apologetically: “She thought you were someone else.” 
Me: “I am someone else.” 
Her: “Never mind.” 

I am trying to be a better conversationalist, but I would rather write than speak. Writing lives in the awkward silence.

I look down on my world again and notice giant shadows moving across it. Clouds. The clouds are below me, the shadows below them. As we glide along, the big patchy clouds begin to fill in. Soon I am looking out onto a thick blanket. It is like looking down on a rolling bright ocean of white waves. I want to walk on it.

It must be gloomy on the ground. Dark. Troubled. Is it raining? They do not look like rain clouds, not from this side. I am looking at a bright dazzling sun shining in an eternal blue sky. Heaven.

Although at this altitude it is fifty below outside. So beautiful. So dangerous. Like so many things. Like God Himself.

I am blocked from those on the ground. They can no longer perceive my craft above them. But I am still here. They are in the shadowlands. I am out of sight, like God. But we are never blocked from His view. He dwells in clouds and thick darkness, and on the wings of the dawn, and in the uttermost parts of the sea.

How can one being fill the cosmos? I do not know.

When clouds block the presence of the sun we do not assume it has winked out of existence. Why would we assume it with the One who has made the sun?

The brightness of Heaven is straining my eyes, so I force them back into the plane and onto the faces around me. How many of them know God, despite the clouds in their life? Every race and ethnicity seems to be on this flight. Here we are all the same. Equal. What happens to one of us happens to all of us.

All sons and daughters of Adam and Eve.

If you pay attention to media, which I try not today, you will think we are all at each other’s throats. We are all racist. We are all angry. We are all protesting each other. We are all divided. But when we go outside and interact with each other we are happy, even kind. We do better with persons than we do with people, I suppose.

It has me thinking of a time I was working somewhere in Virginia. I went for a stroll one evening. There was a river nearby with a nice river walk.

I walk.
A lot.
It’s what I do.
I would go crazy if I couldn’t. 

As I walked I began to realize that I must have been the only white person in this town. I wasn’t alarmed. I was intrigued. Is this what its like to be a minority? In a town? In a school? On a job site? In a church?

I was walking through a park filled with picknickers, on my way to the river, when a beautiful little girl ran up and looked at me inquisitively. I was clearly a novelty for her. Her family was sitting nearby as we had a brief conversation:

Her: “Hello!”
Me: “Hi.” 
Her: “What are you?”
Me: “I’m just a man. What are you?”
Her: “I’m just a little girl.” 
Me: “I think you make a great little girl.”
Her: “Do you work here?”
Me: “No.”
Her: “What are you doing here?”
Me: “I’m just going for a walk.” 
Her: “Have a nice walk mister man.”
Me: “Have a nice picnic little girl.”

Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven.

Animosity is always taught. It is never innate.

The pilot interrupts my revere to announce our final approach to Philadelphia. It is late afternoon and the skies are clear again. I look down and behold my beloved Chesapeake Bay. I see cargo ships and tankers moving up the bay to Baltimore. I can clearly see the immense Bay Bridge heading to Annapolis and the U.S. Navy.

I can see all of Kent Island at once, including Kent Narrows, where there is a hotel where Marji and I have stayed several times. We love it there. Together, on the water, walking across the street for great seafood. Peace.

I wish I were there now, with her. She is at work at this time and I am still hours from seeing her and seven miles above. But she is all I can think about right now. I love being in love. Your heart always has a home.

Now we are landing in Philly; landings and take offs are the only fun part of flying for me. But I must sit in the back of the plane for another twenty minutes while everyone else unloads. It always seems like forever. We all file out to the baggage claim carousels, and then disperse a dozen different ways all over the Delaware Valley.

You would think that 230 people sealed in a metal tube, 35,000 feet in the air, moving at six hundred miles per hour, would be a bonding moment. But it isn’t. Most of us will never see each other again.

It’s so strange being human.

I wonder how people do it.