Look up

The Cathedral of the Sacred Heart church was built in the early 1900s. I took a tour of the church once when the class I was taking in Roman Catholic Thought went on a field trip there. The church is built in the Italian Renaissance Revival architectural style and the building is constructed of Virginia granite and Indiana limestone.

You cannot walk into the church without immediately looking upward toward the heavens. The priest hosting the tour explained that this reaction was exactly what the architects wanted and expected. They designed and built that church with its high arching ceilings, purposefully creating an environment that made you want to lift your eyes skyward.

I feel like I often walk through life with my eyes half open, and I notice other people walking down the street with their gaze steadily on the ground before them. Since being diagnosed with cancer, I spend a lot more time looking upward. Asking God what his purpose is for me.

I play a game. It's my special one, a little silly thing I do. Every day I look for the geese. I look up as I cross the river to go to work and again when I am on my way home across the bridge. Every day I see a goose ... or geese ... I say it's going to be a good day. If I see a goose or geese in the evening, it's like I'm getting a special message from God that life is precious and good and all will be well.

There have been very few days that I have not seen a goose. More often I see flocks of geese flying one way or the other across the bridge, over the river. Now someone could say that it stands to reason that I will always see at least one goose flying one way or the other over the bridge since it is in fact traversing a river where geese are likely to live and breed. But that doesn't stop me from playing my game.

Every day I see a goose ... or geese ... it's a good day. And really, all I have to do is look up.

Looking up is a good thing. It's a positive thing. Some days I have to remind myself to look up. And it's especially on those days that when I see geese in flight I am reminded that each day we are here, alive, and able to lift our eyes toward the heavens ... that is a good day.