The Practice of Looking Up

The past week I've had some intense and difficult meetings, and a schedule that has been somewhat more packed than I would prefer.  Ok, way more packed that I would prefer.  I'm mired in a swamp of details, my concentration is tattered and fluttering in the breeze.  Notes for this essay, permissions for that crisscross on my desk.  I abandon an unfinished email and my tea on my desk to answer a student's question, only to return two hours later to find both my train of thought and tea long gone cold.

On a dash to the grocery store, wearily running through what I still had to tick off the day's list, I happened to look up to see the warm sun wash over the front of the old parish school across the street, lofty thunderheads piled into soft peaks stretching up untold miles into the atmosphere. For a moment I stopped, and breathed. The heavens declare the glory of God...

My tangled, confined heart reached up and stretched into this gloriously infinite space.  I breathed, no less weary, no less on the run, but somehow at rest.

Now each time I walk outside, I've been reminding myself to look up.  To practice stretching into eternity, to extend hands and heart and soul towards the Creator of this firmament that surrounds me, yet does not confine.