I am enchanted by the sky. My kids laugh about this fixation, and the myriad of photographs I take of cloud formations streaked with sunbeams. When I am driving, I will often pull over to the side of the road to whip out my phone and take yet another picture of the wonder above me.
This vast expanse is calming to me. I get lost in it, in much the same way that I get lost in the rhythmic lapping of the waves when I am near the ocean.

But Tennessee is land locked, so I turn my face to the sky. Perhaps I am drawn to whatever is beyond that which I can see.

My father died six years ago. And yet he is very much alive. I know this for a fact, and I feel it in my spirit. He lives in a realm I cannot see, because it is just beyond the confines of physical reality-just beyond the sky, so to speak. When I peer into the perfect blue horizon, I often wonder if he is somehow looking back at me from that place. I wonder what the sky looks like from that other side. If anything, I imagine it is even more glorious than the firmament we consider.

I know a bit about the science of the sky, but just a bit. We studied it in school of course, atmospheric layers and light reflection and refraction. My first adult job was doing the nightly weather report for a local television station, so I learned more about pressure systems and fronts and air currents and such. But it is not the science of the sky that moves me.

It is rather the nature of the sky-the marvel of this ever changing yet oh so constant beauty around and above me. The sky helps me keep life in perspective. It makes me feel very small, in a good way. It encourages me to look up, and it reminds me to look beyond.