I was late. Couldn’t wait. Out the door I ran but stopped as the phone rang. I hesitated and relented, reaching back to answer after I hear the machine recording a voice saying, “This is Dr. Oliver’s office returning your call.” She was still talking as I lifted the receiver to my ear. “We can see you and your broken crown in 30 minutes.”
I sighed into the phone, “OK,” and began my list of people to call and appointments to push down my schedule toward the afternoon.
That was why I ended up standing looking out the window at the Public Health Department in the early afternoon. The broken crown from chewing Super Bowl popcorn and the emergency repair had brought me to an indescribable moment of staring at the pale blue sky and a white puffy cloud thinning as it traveled somewhere and radiated a changing panorama of rainbow colors.
Amazement filled my chest as I watched the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and lavender illuminated through the crystals of that cloud. Just the right temperature. Just the right angle of the sun to the crystals. Just me standing at the correct angle so I could be a witness to this miracle I’d only heard described in detail on the TV two nights previously.
Whatever the reason I found myself standing there at that precise moment, I promised myself I would not miss a chance to look at the sky again. I promised I would look up to make the action become my punctuation mark for beginning and ending my day. I decided it would help me remember there is an overview to this experience here on earth. Looking at the sky in the morning, at odd times, at night time, in sun and rain and fog and wind, I have witnessed miraculous images and patterns play across an expanse that’s only limited by where I’m standing on the Earth; by trees perhaps, or buildings, hills, or nothing at all.
Whenever I stand in the quiet, I can know I am part of it all, of something, of everything, of more than I will ever see or understand. I can practice surrendering to the tides and turns of where I am and what I think I want. Plus, as I settle into my sky-watching perhaps, one day, I will see another perfect miracle of a cloud turning into a rainbow just for me.
