Touching the Face of God

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When I was a child, before the days of 24/7 television across 120-plus stations, television stations featured sign-offs to indicate they were going off air for a few hours, usually in the wee hours of the morning between 2 to 4 a.m. Each station’s sign-off was different, but there was one that seemed to really fascinate me as I watched it during those early mornings when I was up long, long past bedtime because I just couldn’t sleep. (And yes, I had a TV in my room. Blame my parents, why don’t you?!)

I remember the sign-off featured images of airplanes soaring through the clouds, and a man’s voice that always sounded so soothing as he spoke of "dancing in the sky" and "touching the face of God." Sometimes the airplane images were replaced with images of eagles flying across the expanse of sky or an ocean. Ever so high, I recall watching them climb, wishing I could be, feel that free.

The past few months of life have been quite challenging for me dealing with personal, financial and family health issues. As I’ve mentioned a few times in my posts, I share caregiving duties for my parents with my siblings. I’ve been doing this since 2010 when my mom had her first seizure. Three years later, we were having to care for dad also. In the midst of all of this, I experienced my own health crisis and financial loss resulting from being fired from a job that I really enjoyed. Life really is grand, isn’t it? (No, I’m not being sarcastic, much!)

Yesterday I felt that I was near to reaching the breaking point. There was something I wanted, needed to accomplish, yet despite my best efforts I was getting it done--something my Virgo mind just can’t easily handle. As I began feeling the despair and discouragement, tears streaming down my face, I headed outside with my trusty journal in hand to help sort through my feelings. In nature is where I thrive. In nature is where I find peace.

Sitting on the back porch of my parents’ home, I started journaling, and then suddenly stopped to just look up at the sky. The great expanse of blue sky was filled with amazingly beautiful white and soft gray clouds. I felt calm and at peace as I stared off into the distance as far as I could see. I noticed a plane fly by and the usual birds. Breathtaking. I have a deep appreciation for art, and yet don’t believe there is any artist living or dead who could adequately capture the beauty of what I was seeing, experiencing looking up into that sky. It felt like I was seeing something painted made by the very hand of God, which brings me back to the TV sign-offs I mentioned at the beginning of my post.

I sat still for a while, staring into those clouds in front of me, above me, around me, trying to breathe myself into them, make myself one with all that surrounded me when I suddenly remembered the TV sign off from my childhood, the one with man’s voice talking about touching the face of God.

Information addict that I am I decided to search the Internet for that sign off, or the poem, as I was sure it was most likely a poem the man was reading. It was. The poem is High Flight, written by John Gillespie Magee Jr., a 19-year old aviator pilot. He wrote the poem just three months before he died during a training flight from the airfield near Scopwick. Portions of the poem are inscribed on the headstones of many aviators and astronauts buried in Arlington National Cemetery.*

I cried as I read the full poem and understood why the man’s words had so touched me at such a young age that many years later I’m still able to remember those images that flashed across my TV screen and even hear some of the words spoken. I had a rather vivid imagination as a child, still do, and would dream of doing and being pretty much anything. I was a ballerina, and a princess, a rock star, and a cowgirl (not the cheerleader variety). Once I dreamed about walking on the moon and even imagined I was one of the officers on Star Trek (don't ask), not understanding the whole TV isn't real thing. At least not then—no reality television, yet, thank goodness!

I was learning then as I’m still now learning that life offers infinite possibilities for us beyond what we are experiencing in the moment and beyond what we can imagine or dream, if only we could believe that it does. And just like Officer Magee, we, too, can touch the face of God.

Here's the poem for you to read, or you can experience it the way I did as a child.

High Flight 

By John Gillespie Magee Jr.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds, -- and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of -- Wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air...

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark or even eagle flew --

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

* Source: http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/