Sunday

How is it that an aeroplane window can contain such a scene? Below and around is all murky darkness. Above is light, streaming from behind this mighty butress of a mountain, Nanga Parbat, in whose shadow we fly, on and on until we are clear of its bulk and back in the blue. "He wraps himself in light, and darkness tries to hide" we sing later that morning, and this is the image that comes to me again.
We arose before dawn on the first day of the week and proceeded to the airport. We ascended as light broke across the foothills. The sky is bright by the time we land in what appears to be an English country garden at the end of a runway with neatly laid out flower beds in bloom. We are walled in by mountains so high you have to tilt your head right back to see where they end. Passengers amble through the garden to the potting-shed of a terminal. Some light cigarettes. I see a girl I've never met looking at me through mesh in the waiting area. We smile and smile at each other as if it's me she's been waiting for and as if it's her I've come to see.
It seems almost natural for such a relaxed airport that the person due to meet me in is still asleep when I call. No matter, for I go with my travelling companions and am dropped off later.
After the third breakfast of the day - the first was served by waiters in the departure lounge, the second on the flight - my friends and I have a time of singing. It is a fitting end for a Sunday morning spent gazing from above on God's mighty creative power, his ancient forceful moulding of solid rock on the vast scale.

My heart bursts its banks,
Spilling beauty and goodness.
I pour it out into a poem for the king,
Shaping the river into words.

Psalm 45 from The Message