Look Up.

In trenches of political warfare, it is hard to see past the defensive and offensive things going on right in front of me. Too much of the time, I live my life in ways that are not unlike the bitter, tired, and fairly stupid polemics we find littered across the internet, radio, and television. I dig out my position and defend it as best I can from all comers. To do this well, I need to focus. I need to pay attention the things that define my position and stick to them. I need to get mad. I cannot be distracted.

From food choices to political pet peeves, I do the same things over and over. Consequently, I see the same things too.

From time to time, I remember to try and do something different. Something that radically alters my vision: I look up. When I do this, I often realize the poverty of my own perspective. I also discover that the places that I thought myself  familiar with are still quite unfamiliar to me.

For example, one Sunday while watching my son in the confessional area of St. Joseph’s Cathedral during Mass, I looked up. To my surprise I found four huge pictures of the early Bishops of the Diocese of Columbus. On a Saturday trip to the zoo, while standing in the reptile room that we have been visiting religiously for over two years now, I looked up. To my childish delight, I found that there is a giant snake-sculpture that fills the dome of the room. Last night, while having a pensive cigarette in the cold at two-in-the-morning outside my writing headquarters (Buckeye Donuts), I looked up. I saw  snow sifting off the bare tree branches, poofing playfully like clouds of flour, creating two or three tiny little blizzards under the smoky night sky—it was beautiful.

“Looking up” seems very simple—and it is—but it is all too rare in my life. Perhaps this basic practice can enrich your life as it has my own in very literal ways.

More than that, “looking up” might also be a cautionary tale for entrenched warfare in general. What would happen if we all looked to the heavens and saw the vastness of what we are missing? Would we reject it as impractical? Would we foolishly try to bring it down from its lofty place? Or would we simply be moved and wonder, all the while, trying to keep it in our memory as long as possible?

Here is the task: Look up. Try it out right now, and in lots of other times and places too. Especially when one finds one’s heels dug-in, blinded by what is right in front of our eyes and heart. If you care to do this, please tell me what you see and how it goes.

Look up.