Wings: Gathering Storm

Used with permission

What is holding you down?  What is keeping you right where you are?  Do you occasionally have a moment of insight that what secures you also confines you?

Recently at an outdoor gathering a gusty storm was clearly moving in.  A few hats began to fly.  More than one balloon became obvious as they rose above us and danced in the wind that was bringing the storm.  Both the hats and the balloons left me thinking about how it is that we fly and what it is that holds us back from flying.  Sometimes we don’t fly because we are just routinized into our places.  Along comes a gust of wind that lifts us from that place–even slightly sometimes, and we notice that there are other places that we can be, other things that we can do, other perspectives that we are capable of holding.

Sometimes we don’t fly for the bindings, the strings, the rope, the chains, the tethers that prevent us from flying our natural path. At this same large gathering, I noticed a family that gathered not far from us.  They were fascinating to watch.  There was clearly a matriarch and patriarch who sat right in the middle of them.  They had two daughters, each of whom had their husbands with them.  One daughter sat on her father’s left.  The other sat on her mother’s right, and across their parents,these two 50 or 60 something year old women argued with each bitterly.  Their mother tried to referee while all of the men looked ahead stoically.  Then, I looked at the children and grand children that were with them..  Every single female in the group from the 20 year-olds to the matriarch wore the same hairstyle–long hair rolled up in a bun.  Then, I recognized the signs of members of a Holiness branch of Christianity. The tethers were in place.  They clearly kept everyone together.  It was not clear that the tethers made for everyone to be happy people.

Sometimes, the gathering storm, at first menacing, can provide us with the gusts of wind that we need to help us find our wings.  Be aware, today, of those things that seem at first to threaten or irritate:  are they winds in your life tugging the tethers loose so that you can fly?

Bob Patrick