When traveling by airplane, I always request a window seat. To my surprise, seats next to a window are almost always available. I relish the opportunity to look out on the world from high in the sky.

Much about air travel has, of course, become routine. If you fly often, you are accustomed to check-in procedures (though security measures now make them more burdensome), boarding announcements, and reviews of safety measures. These preparations for flight, about the same at every airport and on every plane, stir boredom in many frequent flyer who simply want to get to their destination.

But flight itself should not be boring. I never tire of looking down, usually from a vantage point of several miles, at the earth, the sea, or the clouds. This scenery, laid out on a grand scale, allows me a renewed appreciation of the beauty of creation.

A recent flight home from Paris displayed the wonders of the French landscape. Far below me I could see the Seine as it wound its way north of the city into Normandy. Constantly turning in its path to the English Channel, this river, so resonant with history, led us out toward the Atlantic Ocean and, ultimately, Boston.

The beaches on France’s north coast stirred memories of having seen some of them at ground level only a few days previously. The beach at Etretat, especially, framed by giant cliffs with hollows eroded by centuries of wind, is a sight not to be forgotten any time soon. And the charm of the fishing and yachting port of Honfleur stays in memory long after leaving that picturesque place.

The clouds, when they appear, are drawn into marvelous shapes. Some wispy, others full bodied, these phantasms shifts into continually new formations and, when we ultimately descend to lower levels, at times cover us with darkness. The shapes in their myriad designs have the power to fascinate the observer who continues to contemplate them.

While flying, we are sitting in a huge machine, hundreds of us, with little if any awareness of the dynamics that hold us atop the world. The seat costs money; the view is free of charge, to me a bonus of splendor as we speed by at over 500 miles per hour. Though not an adventurer like Charles Lindbergh nor a poet like the dashing French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery, I am mindful of the challenge and romance they found piloting across the ocean some 80 years ago.

To me it is literally awesome to be carried thousands of miles across huge land masses and a vast ocean toward home. Covering distances that took our ancestors weeks to traverse, we get there in hours. Yes, the passage can sometimes drag but that comes from human inability to sustain the sense of wonder for very long and to keep in mind how fortunate we are in modes of travel compared to our forbears who lived before the 20th century.

In December of 1968, three American astronauts, after orbiting the  earth, set course toward the moon. As they traveled further, they focused a television camera on Earth and sent back images to the planet’s inhabitants. In the words of NASA, “for the first time humanity saw its home from afar, a tiny lovely, and fragile ‘blue marble’ hanging in the blackness of space.”

The astronauts arrived at the Moon on Christmas eve, at which time the crew continued sending pictures while reading these dramatic words from Genesis: “God created the heavens and the Earth, and the Earth was without form and void.”

Though not at the moon’s distance from earth, 250,000 miles, I felt some of the same emotion from my airplane seat. Seen against the backdrop of history, our modern air travel, however routine it has become, amounts to a continuing giant leap for mankind around the globe. We have gained access to a exalted vantage point  for admiring God’s handiwork in the air, the seas, and the land..

Thus I find in airplane travel the basis for a spirituality that starts with awe. You gain a new perspective on the world in which you live, you are presented the opportunity to see it anew and to value it for beauty and grandeur. The flight eventually comes to an end, but the vision can last and shape a deeper appreciation of the gifts that belong to us all.

Richard Griffin