Given to Fly?

I like to fly. Or, rather, to be flown somewhere, since I have neither wings of a feather or a pilot's license of my own. I like how I can board a plane in the morning and be on the ground, eating lunch hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away from where I was only hours before. I love staring out of the window at the world below me, and I'm always awestruck when on cloudy days the sea of clouds stretches endlessly like I imagine ice does in Antarctica. Flying for me never loses its wonder...unless I'm in the middle seat, and then the whole experience pretty much sucks. Nonetheless, flying is quite possibly humankind's greatest achievement. And, yet, I don't think we are supposed to be up there with the clouds and the birds. I understand that we can and are able to fly; it's just that I'm not convinced that simply because we can and do, that we ought and should.

Life in the clouds was once reserved for the heavenly hosts, whether they were on Mt. Olympus or just beyond St. Peter's gate, but when man in his airplanes broke through the water vapor separating us from the divine and, to the delight of atheists worldwide, debunked the vision of harps and angels and so forth, that spiritual connection was lost. We've pushed the heavens out into planetary orbit, so that all we have now is the sky. I like the sky very much, but I miss the days when there was more mystery to it.