Cloud Watching
I recently completed a five part series of posts about recollections from my childhood in the late fifties, early sixties. As I was looking up at the sky the other day, I realized I forgot to mention the underated activity of “cloud watching” that I used to do as a kid. Cloud watching is a wonderful summertime activity that puts a stop to all other thoughts and cares. It gives you a refreshing pause, a “time out” so to speak, in these days of ever-increasing daily activity and ever-growing things to do lists. Sometimes, doing absolutely nothing can ironically be the most productive thing that you can do for yourself. It lifts you out of your “duties and responsibilities smog” and allows you respite that your spirit definitely needs from time to time. In theory, daily prayer time is supposed to be that time where you refresh your spirit, resting in the presence of Divine Providence. A lot of times however it doesn’t work out that way as we have a tendency to look upon prayer as just another daily chore to accomplish and try to stuff it with as many petitions and “I’m sorry’s” as possible. If you think about it however, clouds and the sky are part of God’s creations, part of God, if you will, just like all of nature. If we spend some time dwelling on the clouds in the sky, we are kind of doing what we should be doing in prayer, resting in and dwelling on God.
Modern Day Shepherds
It has been said that the constellations in the night sky were first visualized and named by shepherds who watched over their flock at night to keep the sheep safe from predators. With nothing else much to do by look up into the night sky, they saw different groupings of stars as representative of different beings (mythical gods and animals) as well as inanimate objects (think the Big Dipper constellation). When I was young, I used to do my best cloudwatching over at the empty grass outfield at one of the baseball fields in our town. There was an area in the outfield that had a small rise. I would lie on the grass with my head on the rise and lock my two hands behind my head. Maybe alone or maybe with a friend. The clouds had to be like the image above. Then as the cloud formations oh-so-slowly moved by, I would look at each one and visualize each cloud being something else. I might see a giant, or an ocean liner, or an oddly shaped horse or King Neptune himself complete with trident. It was just best if you let your mind relax without a care in the world and just let your eyes see what they chose to see. Sometimes you would come up with some really weird scenes but almost every cloud formation brought some new image. Then as one formation eventually left the scene, new ones would drift into play. Everything else in the world melted away as you just focused on the clouds, with the blue sky providing an excellent backdrop. Sometimes you would look at a particular cloud formation from a different angle and get a totally different picture of something else than what you originally saw.
Be Still and Know That I Am God
One of the most famous verses in the Bible is found in Psalm 46 — “Be still and know that I am God”. Looking at the word “still”, it comes from the Hebrew word “rapah” which roughly translated means relax, release, cease. To stop all frantic inner activity and simply sink into a resting in the presence of God. To sink into the silence found deep in our hearts and be still. In that very stillness, the Holy Spirit will meet us and invite us to experience the “peace that passeth all understanding”, that inner peace that deep down, every human being on this planet truly desires.