Vertical Vision

As a kid growing up on a ranch in the Rocky Mountains of Montana, we were taught to walk with eyes down and shoes on.  We had cows, horses, chickens, and the occasional wild animal and they left random calling cards everywhere.  Stepping in fresh manure can be rather unpleasant with or without shoes.  We also had snakes - rattlesnakes and bull snakes and garter snakes.  I had a couple somewhat close calls with rattlers over the years, so paying attention and watching where you were walking was important.  I mostly still look down when I walk out of habit and maybe I’ve saved myself some tripping accidents.  Or maybe it’s an introvert’s way of not making eye contact with someone who might want to stop to chat when we’re not feeling social. 

As we walk with our eyes down, or glued to our phones (I still don’t know how people manage to walk and text at the same time), we miss what’s going on around us.  There’s a lot to see on whatever path we may take in a day.  We should want to be aware of our present location and where we are going.  Navigating walking in the day to day requires horizontal vision, not only to be looking straight ahead, but allowing our peripheral vision to clue us in on what could be coming at us from the side. 

But there’s another kind of vision that is almost more subconscious.  It has to be because if we all walked around looking up there would likely be a lot of collisions.  I call it “vertical vision”.  It’s what gives us the ability to look past this moment, this day, this event, this trouble.  It reminds us that there is someone bigger than anything we are going through at any particular time. 

Remember being small and lying in the grass looking up at the sky?  Remember the magic of tall trees waving in the breeze, and blue skies and fluffy white clouds that formed into shapes of magical things?  Did you ever have those moments of sprawling in the bed of a pickup truck on a starry night and seeing a sky so full of stars that you were overwhelmed by the vastness of the universe?  Remember how the cares of the world just melted away because that moment in time reminded you that there is so much more than whatever happened in your day and the cares were small in comparison?  The concept of looking up for many of us may have to do with the fact that we think of heaven as being “up”, somewhere beyond earth’s atmosphere, where God hangs out. 

I believe there’s great benefit to getting outside yourself and remembering to look up.  It helps with perspective.  It helps us to be more optimistic and hopeful.  It reminds us that looking down or horizontally can keep us stuck in the day to day struggles.  Looking up acknowledges that there’s something bigger than all of us.  Give yourself permission and time to “look up” every day.  Sometimes that means finding a place to get quiet and close your eyes.  Maybe what we’re looking for isn’t what we can see "up there", but guidance from who we can’t see.