I look down from my fifth floor terrace and along the street. People move about down there like ants: small dark forms crowding along the sidewalk and spilling over into the street. Cars parked along the road squeeze the space like rocks squeeze a stream.
On the roof across the road a family of seagulls made their nest. The young are growing every day, grey fuzz becoming grey feathers, little squeals begin to mirror mom and dad’s cries.
I’ve seen another seagull with a baby two walls over on the next building top.
Doves nest in the half-done building next door. Swallows soar and fly, doing aerial acrobatics as they catch breakfast, lunch and supper on the wing.
It’s a world all its own up here. A world reached and inhabited by the winged. I, two footed and unwinged, am the interloper. I watch this realm’s inhabitants as they fly, circle, swoop, dodge, dive, and soar on the air currents between and around the buildings. Their agility, quick manoeuvring, and skilled flying amazes me. The seagulls’ flights are silent, floating on the wind or flapping for the turn. Doves’ wings make more noise and flap more often.
These birds move so smoothly, almost effortlessly, high above the ground dwellers, not hindered by roads or traffic nor having to move around these huge concrete blocks. They simply go over. Their concerns, their lifestyle differs from those below. They touch down there only to get food or drink, using it only to fulfill their needs, oblivious to other aspects of life below.
More often, I am below, one of the ants, plodding along concrete sidewalks, around buildings, watching for cars and scooters and trucks and buses and cats and dogs and other bipeds. Down here my view is limited, restricted by doors and windows, signs and vehicles. I move at the speed of my two feet, squeezing between the other ‘ants’ so busy down here.
I purchase my needs, encounter fellow ‘down-dwellers,’ pass beneath the shade of trees or man-built structures. There is beauty here, too. Rooted yet reaching upward. Fellow bipeds sport beauty and some fluidity as they traverse their realm.
I pause and look up.
High above a seagull soars.
Wait. Not so high. That, there, is the building my seagull neighbours built their nest on. Up there is my terrace. There, those birds, pause at times on my wall.
It feels like another world up there. The air lighter, thinner, freer.
How much more then, the difference between my fifth floor terrace perspective and His! He needs neither feet nor wings to travel through His world. Nothing hinders His sight. Nothing blocks His way. All currents support His ‘wings’ as, like much more than an Eagle, He soars high above.
Yet He sees my worlds, too. Both of them. Fifth floor terrace and ant-ish street level.
I would see from His perspective. Surely it is less obstructed, higher, cleaner, freer with a beauty all its own.
