On Clouds

When I was a boy, I could pass the afternoon just looking at clouds. If Dad had mowed the grass recently, the smell of cut grass was calming and the bank looking down over the river was at just the right angle to see the clouds roll by the house. Los Angeles did not have clouds, at least not many, but now that we have come to America’s City there are many clouds. Sometimes I go outside The Saint Constantine School and watch them.

There were stages to cloud watching.

First, I would think about the kind of clouds I was seeing. Science class quickly taught me names like “cumulus” and “cirrus” to pin on the clouds, but this never lasted long. Once I knew what someone named a cloud, thought about the characteristics of the cloud, even acknowledged what made up the cloud, I went back to thinking about that particular cloud.

Which one? That cumulus cloud that looks like it has a horse’s head.

Second, I would imagine what the clouds resembled. There is an old Charlie Brown comic where Linus looked at the clouds and imagined that one group resembled the stoning of the Protomartyr Stephen. He turns to Charlie Brown and asks what he sees. Charlie Brown suggests that he was going to say a horsy or a ducky, but perhaps now he would not.

Count me in the Charlie Brown school of cloud identification. I saw many horses, ducks, and birds. Soon, however, clouds would begin to move together and I would have a different thought: These clouds are lands and there are stories to be told!

Third, I would imagine the lives of those who lived on the different cloud islands. The people on that large dark cloud lived in a fertile land, full of water, yet often dangerous. The folk on that wispy cloud saw much beauty, but the land was always slipping away leaving them in the deep blue sky. Sometimes the lands would merge and that might lead to the marriage of two like cultures or the start of endless war.

There is no doubt that the archipelago world of Barterra was born looking at clouds in West Virginia.

Finally, I would just look at clouds. My mind at last would grow still and I would look at clouds and love clouds. Sometimes, at that sort of moment, I thought I heard God’s voice to little West Virginia me. Oddly, this did not interrupt seeing the clouds as clouds, but was part of the calmness.

I simply was receiving input . . . blue sky, green grass smell, and clouds. God was there.

This is I think a reason for turning off the screen and looking up. It takes time to first get past what we have learned, thoughts of what things are like, and our imaginations. Only with time can we stop inputting and start receiving what God might be saying to us in the clouds.

Thank you, Houston sky.