A View From Above
A new year brings new adventures. I’m writing this post on a plane from Denver to San Diego, traveling there to lead a retreat for the executive council of the Presbytery of San Diego. It’s my first work trip of 2025, and I should be polishing the slideshow for our gathering tomorrow. Instead, I’ve been looking out the window of the plane: staring down from 24,000 feet at the tops of 14,000 foot peaks that I’ve climbed, snapping pictures of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison (a National Park near where I grew up), and admiring sandstone pillars and spires rising toward us as we fly over Utah and Arizona.
I’m on the wrong side of the plane to see sites I visited on sabbatical last summer like Capitol Reef and Death Valley, but traveling again over such expansive landscapes brings back memories that still want to put into writing. I journaled consistently throughout the summer, but those were mostly private reflections. They need to be sifted and sorted to be turned into lessons have broader application. I hope to get back on track with such work in the coming weeks. The needs of pastoral ministry and family busyness have all felt so urgent over the past three months that I’ve put off the important work of making space for creativity. If I were my own coaching client I’d ask myself some probing questions about this procrastination: Who are you seeking to please? Why deny yourself the pleasure of being creative? Why hide your gifts when you could let your light shine?
It's been a year and a month since I launched this Substack. Thank you to those who have read my work and supported me throughout this time. I know annual paid subscriptions recently renewed for several readers, and I truly appreciate your continued support. The emails and comments I receive back from you after I send out a post encourage me to keep writing, so please keep them coming, too.
The plane has traveled further now, and we’re above Lake Havasu City, on the Colorado River at the border of California and Arizona. I know this because, despite having my phone in airplane mode, the GPS on my phone still provides me with a blue dot on the map and I can match the shape of the lake to the cruder outline of it on the map. Now we’re over the southern side of the Mojave Desert. We’re not far from Joshua Tree National Park – another sabbatical destination – but, again, it’s on the wrong side of the plane.
It's getting hazy, too. Before the plane took off, I read news about wildfires near Los Angeles. Now we're flying through their smoke. The sky above the plane remains blue, but the setting sun is turning the smoke below us a faint pink. In clearer spots I can see desert, then a body of water: the Salton Sea. When we visited Joshua Tree last summer, we drove to Keys View, a high point from which visitors can see the Salton Sea in the distance, but that day’s haze obstructed our view.
Viewing the world from above puts things in a new perspective. I literally saw the forest through the trees as we flew over Colorado today, and that gave me space to reflect on the other ways one can lose track of the big picture amid a haze of distractions. So I’ll offer these questions for you: What’s clouding your vision? Where have you been choosing the urgent over the important? What can you do to get a view from above as you start 2025?