It was August, and I was looking up at the sky. With one hand shielding my eyes, I made out a falcon soaring on the currents of hot swirling air. Higher and higher it spiraled, until with one unearthly shriek, it disappeared.
All at once I felt left behind. “Why did you grow wings without me?” I mourned. Then my spirit said, “The falcon’s way is not the only way. Your thoughts are as free as any bird.” So I shut my eyes and my spirit took off, spiraling as high as the falcon and then beyond, so that I was looking down over the whole earth. But something was wrong. Why did I feel so cold and alone?

“You grew wings without me,” my heart said. “What good is freedom without love?” So I went quietly to the bed of a sick child and sang him a lullaby. He fell asleep smiling, and my heart took off, joining my spirit as it circled over the earth. I was free and loving, but still something was wrong.

“You grew wings without me,” my body said. “Your flights are only imagination.” So I looked into books that I had ignored before and read about saints in every age who actually flew. In India, Persia, China, and Spain (even in Los Angeles!), the power of spirit has reached, not just into the heart, but into every cell of the body. “As if carried aloft by a great eagle,” Saint Teresa said, “my ecstasy lifted me into the air.”

I began to believe in this amazing feat, and for the first time, I didn’t feel left behind. I was the falcon and the child and the saint. In my eyes their lives became sacred, and the truth came home: When all life is seen as divine, everyone grows wings.