Rise Above It

When I left Baltimore, MD on Sunday afternoon, Nov. 9, 2008 it was sunny and in the 60′s.

By the time I landed in Cleveland, OH an hour later, it was dark with overcast clouds, cold and raining.

As I sat in the airport waiting for my flight to Grand Rapids, MI, I overheard a woman near me on her cell phone talking in increasingly disparaging tones with the person on the other end about weather conditions in GR.  I heard phrases like: “…snowing all day?… If it’s too dangerous to go out, I can take a cab… be careful…”

Swell.

But when we took off a short time later, an interesting thing happened.  The plane rose through the oppressive cold, wet gloom that gripped Cleveland (and apparently most of the Midwest), rain streaking the windows, and ascended in to the inky dark clouds.

And then…

We burst through the cloud ceiling to a scene of unbelievable beauty.

The sun was a brilliant orange/gold against a limitless sky of clear blue.  The top of the clouds created a puffy blue-grey carpet as far as the eye could see and the late afternoon sun painted the distant clouds with ribbons of shimmering light.  It was breath-taking.

I sat in my seat, looking out at the vista (the sun was very bright in my eyes, but couldn’t not look…), amazed that all this clear, warm beauty existed just above all that cold, grey, damp ugliness below.

I played with the feelings of elation that we had escaped the weather on the ground and sadness that we would soon have to leave this paradise and return to a wintery world below.

As I watched a magnificent sunset on a horizon created by the cloud carpet, I was thankful for the chance to be there; thankful for the reminder that, when things get ugly where you are, there are still places of warmth and beauty in the world somewhere.

“But how can you get from the ugly to the beauty?” I mused.  It’s usually not as easy as getting on a plane and taking a window seat.  Then it hit me:

When you find yourself in the midst of the ugly, you have to find a way to rise above it.

Sometimes it is something you can choose to DO that will lessen the ugliness a bit.  Sometimes it is something you can SAY that will lift the conversation (and it’s participants) to a better place.  And sometimes it can merely be deciding that you will not let this ugliness consume your spirit and clinging to the belief that the world, and you, can be… ARE… better than this.  And live as such.

There is a lot of ugliness out there, friends.  Financial, political, social, economic, environmental… to name just a few.  On the Thursday after the election, I heard someone going on about the Obama/William Ayers connection.  Still.  “Let it go,” thought I.  We all need to find a way to rise above the ugliness and, together, move on to somewhere better.

As the plane descended into Grand Rapids, we slipped below the cloud ceiling and the dark returned in ernest.  I could see the snow shooting horizontally past the window.  It was sad, but I had to smile at the memory of the beauty that existed just a short distance away.

I hope that each of us… as individuals facing our own darknesses… and as a nation and world… will find the strength and fortitude will find a way to rise in the midst of whatever ugliness we find ourselves in.  This ugliness is not… must not be allowed to be… all there is.  We must rise, friends.  Take someone with you if you can, but do what you can to rise above it.  There is a better somewhere just a short distance away…

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