The sky looked like an El Greco painting done in shades of gray and turned on its side. Huge drops of cloud emerged from the dark bank and sagged toward the earth with light shafts of mist drifting between them. Like hot air balloons suspended upside down, they hung, shifted slowly. They seemed so distinctive and separate they looked as if they had been drawn individually. The only hint of color came from near the earth where the slightest tints of a setting sun pasteled the lowest clouds. A whole section of sags and swirls seemed pulled toward a common point, a slow motion pouring into a funnel. It was as if the sky were made of wax, sagging toward the fire.

I pulled out my cell phone, hoping to get some awesome pictures. The battery was too weak to take even one.

In a few minutes, the clouds began to fade. I drove as quickly as I dared in town, hoping to get home in time to show Randa. Having parked the truck, I headed up to the house. As I looked up toward the sky, I found I had to face another disappointment. Time, angle and trees had conspired; there wasn’t a single vantage point that allowed a full view of that part of the sky and those dramatic, vivid shapes had already blurred.

We often feel the frustration of trying to describe some spectacle or some extraordinary experience. No matter how descriptive our words or enthusiastic our retelling, we are not able to capture and convey what we wish our audience could fully comprehend. And so we are left knowing that we have not given it justice; we have not been able to make the others see what we saw nor experience the event as we experienced it.

But that should not lessen the moment or its meaning for us. Even what cannot be duplicated for others can still be shared and all of us made richer by the effort. It is in the struggles and limitations of human that we become more humane. And more spiritual, too, if we are willing.

H. Arnett
5/4/10