Yesterday, I looked up at the sky and saw a mile-long formation of geese heading South for the winter. It was one of the more beautiful things I saw in the past week or in months. I believe we are meant to be joyful in life, and those geese flying overhead in this stunning formation brought me joy and wonder.
“Look up,” I said to Maria, “look at that formation; it’s a miracle.” Maria nodded; she shared\ my joy and wonder at nature and the things it does. Living in nature is one of the things that brought both of us together and determined to live in the country.
This is America in 2023, and miracles seem more important than ever. Joy is harder to find, just like nature for many people. Joy is frowned upon. Nature is mainly ignored. To me, those geese are Picasso, Michelangelo, and Whitman all gathered together, their spirits flying through the air, the very soul of a community, the sheer wonder of nature.
So beautiful, I thought; no one could find a reason to doubt the miracle of the formations, not even now.
I was wrong, of course. We are not a nation of liberty these days but a nation of arguments, corrections, and victims. We have forgotten how to listen or the joy of wonder.
When I woke up, Palev was waiting for me, online, of course. “Um,” he wrote. “It’s the Upwash Lift. Not a Miracle.”
Wow, talk about peeing in my garden; the air went right out of my miracle.
I looked up Upwash Lift; I thought I should know about it. This is what I found:
“On fixed-wing aircraft, the wing is the principal contributor to the lift produced by the airplane. While making the lift, the wing induces an angle of attack on the stream around it. The induced angle is positive ahead of the wing and is called upwash.
Air primarily moves in two directions around an airfoil: under and over.
The difference in airspeed between the two paths results in the Bernoulli effect, which is the conventional source of lift. The portion of the air that travels over the top of the airfoil is called upwash.”
Okay, I still don’t know what it means, but I tried to picture shouting that out in the pasture.
I got a big smile when I read Pavel’s message; it is so American nowadays. Joy and wonder are considered “woke,” something to be crushed and, if possible, banned. I decided to try it out.
I choose joy in my life whenever possible, and to me, all of life is a miracle. I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced Uplist Wash, but it didn’t seem miraculous. I wondered how Maria would take it.
We were outside in the pasture this morning, and another formation of geese flew overhead. We both looked up. “Look,” I said to Maria, as we both heard the iconic and beautiful cries of the geese talking to each other and navigating. “It’s the Upwash Lift!”
Maria looked at me strangely. “You mean the geese?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, “the geese, you know, the Bernoulli effect.”
Maria was not impressed. She looked at me strangely and not in shared wonder. It didn’t feel like yesterday. Seeing the geese as a part of Upwash Lift took the magic out of it; it felt like a weather report.
I think I’ll keep calling it a miracle. It feels so much better.
The exchange rang a bell with me. In my Mansion Meditation Class (which is this morning), I often talk about the importance of joy and happiness in one’s life.
Just last week, I read the residents this excerpt from spiritual author Joan Chittister:
“There are simply some things in life that are meant to be enjoyed. There is something about joy that is as holy as suffering can ever be…Genuinely holy people know that life is to be enjoyed as well as disciplined, happy, controlled, full of the juice of life as well, and stripped of good times in the name of holiness. We are meant to be joyful because life is good and can be enjoyed.” -Joan Chittister, Grace-Filled Moments.
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I don’t know Pavel, I don’t expect we will be friends. I shivered at the thought of never seeing a miracle around my beautiful farm and the beautiful skies overhead. I can’t be happy all of the time and don’t wish to be. That would make joy and wonder ordinary, even dull.
I wondered why you didn’t feel I was entitled to see the formations as miraculous, why you wanted to take that joy from me. Social media teaches people how to talk – and talk – but only the sacred few know how to listen.
Could Pavel not listen to me? When we listen to a person, we take them into our lives. We welcome them and all of their concerns, their interests, their wonders, all of their wonders, and their spirituality.
“Listening,” wrote Henri Nouwen, “is a form of spiritual hospitality by inviting strangers to become friends.”
I can’t tell you what to do or write, Pavel, but I hope you give listening a chance.
It’s a doorway to the world of wonder. Reading your message over, I wondered if Upwash Lift can carry us to happiness. It’s not the worst term for joy.
I Believe joy and whatever you want to call what Pavel was saying can co-exist. I have read about the science of geese flying in formation, it is fascinating, and every time I hear and see them it is a miracle or beauty, hope and joy. I am fortunate to have an extraordinary view from my window looking over toward the Coastal Mountains of BC. We chose this house because of the view (it’s a nice house as well) and I never tire or nor take it for granted.
Jon, I love how you are evolving, growing and embracing life, love, joy and what is. Keep it up.
What Pavel failed to realize is that geese aren’t “fixed wing” therefore the upwash lift can’t be applied to them. Their formations are a miracle of nature. I grew up with a hunter for a dad and he explained how the ducks and geese’s rotated throughout their formations to keep each member of the flock together and give those at the front of the formation a rest. A lot of people don’t know that geese mate for life and when their mate gets shot by a hunter they will leave the formation and circle their dead mate. I witnessed this many times while hunting with my dad. These are the geese my dad would shoot, he never shot into a formation, he thought that was cruel. Enjoy your beautiful migrating geese, they truly are one of natures miracles!
I loved this story about the “uplift wash”! I too live rurally and love to see and hear the geese come and go, just as I see my hummingbirds come back to my same window every spring, right after the red wing blackbirds and orioles. And yes it is very much a miracle. My husband ,who is a retired UVM professor of Wildlife Biology agrees. You can read all the research you want but so much remains a mystery. And you are right about living in the country where you are forced to interact with nature every day…… it is both healing and life changing. I will never leave rural Vermont. Thanks for a great story and a good laugh Jon!
I used to fly planes, and for that role, it’s important to understand principles of what makes flight possible. And it’s fine to know the technical names of aspects of nature, but, like you, Jon, I relish just accepting their beauty–in the moment. The technical and magical can coexist, and it’s important that they do, yet one should not supersede the other.
When I learned to fly, I had to pay close attention to the technical. Yet the majesty of soaring above the ground put a lot of things in perspective–and gave me an appreciation for the beauty of our earth that I did not experience when I was closer to it.
I have found that in life, there are always people who take pleasure in popping other people’s balloons. They enjoy taking away the joy of others.
I love good, solid science and knowing things. What I love more, is the true majesty of nature – and how it all happens irrespective of what we humans have chosen to name it. I believe, too, that the fact that we humans can stand in awe of nature and her wonders, is what makes being human magical.
I think it is a miracle that the world is here with all that it holds. Seeing those photos from outer space with the giant galaxies going on for millions of light years with the earth just a tiny speck is miraculous with its oceans and mountains, animals in the water, animals in the air. I personally don’t believe it was created but evolved but it is overwhelming to just think about. What man is doing to it is horrible.
Simply being able to see the beauty in something is a miracle and when you can do that it means that you have a heart of gratitude and compassion. I’d take that over being scientifically correct anyway ✨
I don’t see why the Bernoulli principle and upwash lift aren’t also miraculous. When you don’t deeply understand how something works, but you can label it, sometimes that’s just a shorthand way to stop considering and marveling at it — regarding it as a miraculous aspect of an intricate universe.
Years ago I read “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain,” and tried the exercises it includes, and discovered that my mind (evidently like many others) takes that kind of shortcut all the time. Instead of deeply perceiving something I see, which enables me to draw it, I “label it” (that’s a face; this is a dog) and then all I can draw is a sort of stick figure representation of the label. “Dog,” instead of MY dog. “Face of a person,” instead of my daughter. Doing the work to more deeply understand something (like air pressure or flowers or a bit of math) reveals that where we live, it’s all miracles all the time.
In my experience, people who go deep into a subject, whether it’s fluid dynamics or physics, math or chemistry, appreciate the miracles beneath the easy labels that most people’s minds bounce off of.
Also, not to contradict an earlier poster, but I think bird flight, while different from airplane flight, does depend on the same principles of fluid dynamics and differential pressure. More the miracle; there are TWO ways to solve the equation — not to mention the ways aquatic life (fish, etc) and ships use exactly the same principles to move through water.
It needs to be said as a reminder.
When designing the first planes, the dynamics of bird-flight was what was used to put the mechanical process together.
The miracle of what these creatures do remains in the miracle of Nature.
Don’t give up the miracle, Jon.