letters from barabbas

As the plane lifts above the globe, the weight of the world is lifted from my ears and the clouds obscure my understanding of the terrain I've been walking through. I sip my shiny ginger ale from a tiny plastic cup and my life becomes perfectly clear.

It always seems like I need to travel somewhere to reach my next epiphany. But it isn't that I'm not evolving right here in Auburn, in my every day. I'm just too blind to see the change unless I look at myself from another angle. Or someone shows me who I am. The hours in the stratosphere are time enough to marvel at the new length of my hair, the subtle changes in my walk, my posture, my smile. Time enough to breathe recycled air and realize I don't have asthma, never have, and the gasping sounds I've been making were a bit melodramatic.

Of course, as soon as we pierce the clouds and I regain my bearings, atmospheric pressure returns (leaving my ears feeling groggy and annoyed) and I feel the thump of tires on the runway jolt confusion back into my brain.
I don't drink ginger ale unless I'm flying. It doesn't have the same effect. But I have notebooks full of scrawls of struggle and regeneration. I can't begrudge them their wonder, their hope, their naiveté. I can't deny I wrote them, and I can't deny they're true.

Ascension always brings clarity. Traveling feels so right because it's what we're doing all the time--even when we're not. We're climbing mountains, passing through the valley of the shadow of death, bridging gaps between two hearts, running from the truth, hiding out in deserts until the shadow passes over. It feels right to travel because we always are.

We're traveling miles in the abstract every day.
We just have to act it out in the literal world in order to really grasp it.
Is everything that way?