Getting older brings various limits. What used to be an adventure now feels risky, even dangerous. Digging a flower garden is more of a challenge. Making up a bed is harder than it used to be. Lifting heavy things can leave one with days of back pain.
A long road trip sometimes feels prohibitive. A long plane trip seems out of reach. The worse thing is that taking risks can be frightening, and chasing dreams and adventures sometimes feels impossible.
And yet the sky still calls out to me, opening up before me with new dreams and fresh adventures. Only I can decide not to lean on the age-old excuse, “I’m too old!” As I do many times, I bask in the inspiration of Bishop Charleston.
Fly before the wind that lifts you, soaring on wings outstretched to the sun. Do not feel constrained to stand below, afraid to take the risk, but trust in your own imagination, in the wild ideas that others cannot yet see. Let them pull you from the common ground and up to a different horizon, a far vision of what might be if only you can reach it. Already you feel a stirring to do something different. Go with that first breeze and see how far it can take you. You were not born to plod the earth, but to test the limits of the sky that calls you.
The sky still calls me. I still want to soar. What if I still can? What if dreams and adventures are still possible for me?
There is freedom waiting for you,
On the breezes of the sky,
And you ask “What if I fall?”
Oh, but my darling,
What if you fly?
― Erin Hanson
God of the Sparrow 🌱 By Kathy Manis Findley 