Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited

Flying Clear in a World of Smog

Summer has unofficially arrived with its lazy heat, and with that, changes to our thermostats and routines. Dads begin their yearly campaign of HVAC vigilance, eyeing exterior doors with fiduciary suspicion. We exercise outdoors in the cool of morning to escape sweltry afternoons. Kids attend camps to preserve moms’ sanity. Traffic is calmer, but interstates rev up into sun-baked infernos. Days are now wonderfully or unnaturally long, depending on your affinity for these alterations.

Our world is engulfed in its own season, though it’s largely devoid of the barefoot pleasures summer brings. The same dull haze that settles over skyscrapers in July has gripped the psyche of the entire globe, but in a season measured in human epochs, not months. We hope flying here and there may lift us out of the news cycle or shield us from its ghoulish characters, even if for just one weekend.

When I was in high school, my dad joined a couple of retired admirals to create a small staffing company. At the time, I thought its name—CAVU—was odd; but it was an aviation term meaning “ceiling and visibility unlimited,” perfect flying conditions for the retired fighter pilot who sparked their enterprise. (My husband flew, too, so I pulled out this impressive bit of aviation knowledge when we were dating.)

When I fly, I’m always hoping for a CAVU experience. I book a window seat so I can bring some crisp, blue awe into an otherwise ragged travel day. I want to peer through 30,000 feet of clear air to see snaking water or wrinkled mountains. It’s disappointing when a sea of cotton thwarts this fun, but it forces my admiration in a different direction—upwards. A layer of poetic and otherworldly grays lend the curtain of clouds a bit of majesty and mystery. On descent, I’ll bump down through them in white-knuckled tension, but from the sunny side above them, their turbulence is comfortably distant.

Sometimes I land to find those cloudy skies snuffing out my travel excitement. The palm trees look stormy, or peaks disappear in mist. Roads are wet, and people are both wet and glum. Yet, just minutes before, sunlight had thrown a golden glow on the same sea of gray now shading my mood. Life looked different above the cloud.

Similarly, we find our spirits swamped lately; an unrelenting haze of absurd culture envelops the world with his heaviness—except, sadly, this is no seasonal phenomenon. Its ancient vapors have outlived weather fronts and cultural fads. In fact, what we thought were just old fads were the initial stirrings of the front, tiny clouds that hung at a distance. Now we sit daily under their frowning shadows, with no forecast of clearing in sight.

An exceptional light still smolders, though, and it always will. Our world is still alive with the stubborn magic that the wet blanket can’t fully cover. We can still smile at everyday beauties like fiery sunrises, grassy parks, lake swims and heat lightning; the California coast still outshines perversions encamped just miles away. Men and women still marry and make babies; people still make music, too. The good stuff sparkles with a glimmer of heaven, while the bad stuff hovers jealously.

Yet, when far enough away from such enchanted places, we feel the damp spirits. They’re haunting our stores, offices, schools and even churches. Go run a few errands, get out a bit; unless you live in a bubble, you’re likely to encounter those who, subtly or not, reek of the swampy evil. You sense the darkness in their words, their looks, and their ideas; and why don’t they? It’s very simple. They breathe the smog of disbelief, thus poisoning their persons and endeavors with its deadly fumes.

Belief, after all, is at the core of our universe. You believe the world is beautifully designed and sustained by God, or it’s an evolving Game of Thrones hanging by perilous chance. You believe God defines truth and beauty, or you believe that you and your fellow citizens must use roller-coaster emotions—and some hints of conscience—to define it. Consorting with the masses, you inexplicably find agreement on a few things—murder, adultery, theft were bad for a while. Still you must decide whose ultimate good governs a just society—assuming you and your fellow citizens can agree on a definition of justice.

Under the world’s blanket of disenchantment and unbelief, visibility is poor, at best. People move about under its fog, hoping for pleasures or policies that outwit threats to gritty survival or progressive utopia—the poor hopes of a lost world. Life for them is a spiritual game of pin the tail on the donkey, a blind and stupid pursuit with no prize.

Our beliefs, then, are the air that we breathe. This is good news in a world where masses suffer under the culture’s smoggy hopelessness and fear. We don’t have to resign ourselves to the same anxious pursuits and confusing morality that dominates the worldling’s atmosphere. Clearer visibility and unlimited skies are found with the right instrumentation—and for the people of God, the compass is found in belief.

Knowing and believing that the universe was framed by the word of God brings CAVU to daily life, transcending the faithless gray ceiling of culture. We believe that God never lies, and that we were designed for relationship with him. We believe that the abundant life he promised—stamped with the glow of eternity— is impervious to the glories and privations of this short life. The news comes and goes, and our stars rise and fall, but “the word of the Lord endures forever.”

Clear sights chart wise courses through broken relationships, sexual confusion, economic mischief and psychological darkness. Those with unlimited ceilings see the possibilities of divine purpose, not just a vague role in bettering a mysterious world. Their strange courage flows from believing the heart of God, not themselves; he delights in making broken things whole. Their path is perhaps bumpy, but illuminated in its adventure, not plagued by the tragic follies of flying blind.

Flying spiritual CAVU isn’t living with our heads above the clouds, though we often pine for that gleaming side; it’s seeing clearly despite their gloomy presence. If we can see clearly, so much better for our staggering world; it needs this hope, with an eye to unlimited skies.