THIS SIDE OF THE KÁRMÁN LINE

I’ve been thinking about the atmosphere. It’s 62 miles thick. At least, that’s the agreed line that most people think counts as the edge of Earth and the beginning of space.

That’s a lot of air we live in - for planes, balloonists, mountain climbers, meteors, cumulonimbus, and the rest of us.

I’m sitting in a building that’s just a few metres tall, but above that, the clouds hang. Above their fluffy tops, the aeroplanes fly, and above them the air thins out to purple and black, where the satellites whizz past, beneath the stars and the planets.

It’s kind of incredible. But then, there are lots of incredible things that are vast, wild, free, mind-blowingly massive, and truly amazing, both this side, and that side, of that 62-mile-high ‘Kármán Line’.

This ceiling, the one above me, is not one of them. It’s a shoddy barrier between us on the ground, and the sparkling atmosphere out there. It blocks my view with tiles and insulation, and it makes me forget about what might be beyond. And for what? To keep the rain off? To contain the warmth pumped out by our stuffy heating system? Seems like a poor exchange to me.

I think there are other ceilings though, every day: things that box us in, that keep us short-sighted with a focal length that extends only to the furthest wall. 

And every now and again, I find myself catching a glimpse of something... further.

This is hard to describe. It’s a tiny moment of electricity, a micro-sweep of excitement, a scintillation, a flash of brilliance. It’s like remembering what Christmas feels like in the Spring, or imagining yourself, just for a moment on a summer holiday where nothing at all matters. Like an aroma I’ve forgotten, it only lasts for a moment and then I’m back in the practical, under the ceiling and staring at the wall.

I wonder how you grow those moments of wonder. I see them in art, particularly my friend Sammy’s work - she has a way of capturing them and releasing them. She’s not alone though; they are there in music and in poetry too: deep unspoken pathways into the great beyond. I really like it when God speaks to me through one of those moments.

There’s a lot of atmosphere out there. Sometimes I think I just need to get on with the getting-out-there and the breathing-it-in.