Between heaven and earth. A contemplation on the sparrow, Kierkegaard, and finding one self anew on an airplane ride.
.On Being Human Series #6.
I am writing to you from above the skies, dear fellow pilgrim, somewhere between heaven and earth, on my way to Europe for a conference. I hope this is a fitting space for another essay in our On Being Human series coming to you monthly(ish). You are welcome here at this cloistered space, where we contemplate all things human on the inner path.
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I am somewhere between heaven and earth. The moon is rising before my window into the night sky, mirrored by the clouds wavering below.
I am alone in this vast land, pressed into a tight plane seat with hundreds of travelers. But with my headphones on noise cancelation and me gazing into the night sky, I feel utterly alone.
But not that kind of alone! I mean alone in a good way. Or as Søren Kierkegaard has it said more poetically: alone before God. Embraced by the universe, my soul feels like it is bouncing around like a young child.
I am traveling alone! All by myself since a very long time. There was no packing up a whole family to go on vacation, no last minute chores like watering the house plants, packing the cooler, and all the numerous things mothers have on their mind when they travel.
I am traveling alone, dear friends, and while I felt that my heart was pulled out of my chest when I left my 5-year-old behind for the first time for such a long a journey, I was not prepared for what happened some minutes into the flight.
Have I already praised noise-canceling devices? They truly help, especially people with ADD like me who are sensitive to noise and easily overwhelmed. And there is a lot of overwhelm on a plane.
Kierkegaard, the existential Danish writer (well yes, I will present a paper on him in Norway, but that is another post) once told the story of him walking into the Jutland heights up to a mountain top. Well, if you know Denmark, it surely wasn’t a mountain top but rather the top of a smoothly rolling, rather large hill. Still, coming out of the busy city of Copenhagen, he walked up there all by himself.
When he set off to that hill top, somewhere in the vast Jutland north of Denmark, his heart started pounding. Something weird was going on. He felt utterly alone and he felt utterly embraced. Like the universe had singled him out to watch all creation unfolding before him, he felt small and at the same time held by an invisible force.
Love and peace swept over him as he wrote a glowing statement about this experience in his green leather notebook. An experience which changed him forever. And also changed our intellectual history, marking the pivotal point of his writing which made him one of the most influential authors of the modern age (long after his passing).
He had a “sparrow moment.” Do you remember the sparrow?
“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”
—Matt 6:26
Look at the birds of the air, Jesus says. They neither reap nor store, yet God cares for each of them.
I must have tasted a tiny little bit of that sparrow moment, dear friend, flying into that dark evening sky, with the moon rising above all of us.
“Be not afraid,” I heard the universe humming to my anxious heart.
“I see you,” whispered the God of the sparrow into my noise-canceling headphones.
You are loved. You are whole. Here, out over the wide ocean, you are home.
Have you ever known this moment, when you step out of your roles, your busyness, your daily life, and suddenly are thrown back onto yourself? Onto the single, naked relation of your way of being with yourself?
I had been busy with my wife and mother role, and apparently have never really stepped out of it (even when I thought I did). For years I packed up a family, kept myself busy thinking about everyone’s welfare, always harboring hidden frustration with all what did not go according to plan, with all the undone work, and with those closest pushing these buttons masterfully.
Flying alone, leaving the roles I had clutched, jumping out of my comfort zone, trusting myself again to that almost forgotten scholar’s mind on the way to a conference, with strangers, and not my loved ones, sitting beside me, there was nothing for me to do. No thinking for everyone, no fussing with my child to make her comfortable in the plane, no complaining to my husband because he forgot something, again. No sighing because I forgot something because I was thinking about every one else!
There was no one to care for, no one to complain to.
There was just me looking out the plane window, pouring some red wine into my plastic cup while stirring the Icelandic Chili in a paper bowl handed to me by the flight attendant.
The smell of the spices of this humble dish woke up my senses. The moon rising in front of the window mingled with the red wine on my tongue.
My anxious heart slowed. My noise-cancelling headphones played my daughter’s playlist, a necklace of German lullabies.
Pounding heart, bursting.
Feeling itself, like after a long journey
Feeling itself,
Pounding again in the vast universe
Seen by the One
who made us all
And for whom I have no words,
Not even pronouns.
Just me, a sparrow, cared for and seen,
In the vast field of clouds and stars and planes and people and galaxies.
Who am I that you think of me?
“My beloved child,” whispers the voice in my noise-cancelling headphones.
I feel a tear (or two) slowly rolling down my cheek.
Never have I heard the lullabies of my daughter as if I were her,
a child of God, in the vastness of it all.
What beautiful music, what beautiful affirmations.
What a beautiful child of mine I am leaving behind.
What an immense blessing I have hidden behind my busyness, care, and concern.
We must leave ourselves to arrive, again, at ourself,
wise people say.
We must become like the sparrow, very alive and little concerned
beloved by the maker of the universe.
And red wine, the lonely moon,
and noise-cancelling headphones,
brought me here.
Come, join me,
Be a sparrow…
for a moment…
sit here with me
…
and be
…
Love and Blessings, Almut
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Thank you, thank you.
Absolutely beautiful! I wish I were on a plane at night experiencing the beauty. We all long for the beloved moment with God. Thank you.
Thank you Almut, on target to heart, mins, and soul. ❤️. Chris