A couple of weeks ago, someone I don't know commenting on somebody else's Facebook post mentioned being a member of the Cloud Appreciation Society.
Cloud Appreciation Society?? Something within me perked up. There's really a Cloud Appreciation Society? I must know more....
I have resonated to clouds and sky for a long long time. It was in my early elementary school years, when the nuns were busily teaching me all the traditional images for God (Shepherd, King, Jesus, Father) that I named for myself a unique personal image of God: an overcast sky of textured gray clouds, which spoke to my young self of a God who tucked me and the whole world in safe and warm, like the blankets that tucked me into my bed at night.
And from that point on, whenever I took note of the clouds in the sky, it was like a little quick moment of touching base with God--a God as vast and varied and ever-present as the sky and its clouds.
So of course I had to find out about the Cloud Appreciation Society.
And it turns out there really is such a thing! There's a website (here), and for a modest one-time fee you can become a lifetime member.
The founder, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, speaks charmingly of "fighting the banality of 'blue-sky' thinking" and not being ashamed to own up to loving the clouds that others moan about. He's got a wonderful manifesto that ends with a resounding call to "Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and live life with your head in the clouds!"
There's an online Cloud Shop at the website where you can purchase Society memberships, cloud-themed objects, and Pretor-Pinney's two books, The Cloud Collector's Handbook and The Cloudspotter's Guide. I've started the first one and am finding it full of information, wit, and whimsy.
The Society also exists as a Facebook group, which I of course immediately asked to join.
So for the past couple of weeks, my Facebook feed has been full of pictures of clouds posted by Society members all over the world. Regular post-ers include people in England, Italy, Croatia, Finland, Australia, Brazil, Spain, Scotland, and Nepal. And some members appear to be pilots, because we often get pix of the clouds taken from above.
It's amazing how gently but powerfully I am affected by seeing these posts regularly. My sense of who I am and where I live is steadily, softly, inexorably expanding.
This morning, as I sat in the early morning dark sipping my coffee and checking Facebook, I was met with pictures of glorious sunsets from Australia and Nepal, and brilliant noonday clouds from England. So of course I had to set down my coffee and go outside to photograph the delicate wispy-pink dawn clouds of Ohio to post.
My sense of who I am and where I live feels different. It's not the content of it that has changed, but the experience of it. I no longer feel myself living only here in Dayton OH, but rather on a whole turning planet. It's winter where I'm posting from, and in England and Finland and Croatia, but I'm also absorbing posts of the rich summer currently bathing Australia and Brazil. If it's breakfast time where I am, I am taking in images of noonday or sunset somewhere else. Before I go to bed, I may even be seeing images of tomorrow's dawn.
I can feel this expansion of self and sense of place happening through the common bond of gazing with wonder and appreciation at the sky and the clouds. In place of the abstract concept of "one world, one human family," I now experience one shared delight in the different moods of the sky and clouds happening simultaneously around the planet in human hearts everywhere that enjoy it as much as I do.
It's quite lovely. A completely unexpected blessing.
