Drawing with smoke
Skywriting and other short-lived arts
by Ken Rummer
Photo Credit: K. Rummer
The line is thin and gray, and loopy in an old-fashioned, cursive way. I notice it, quite by chance, through the glass of the sliding door to the deck, and it draws me to the pane for a closer look.
An elegant, gently rising stroke is followed by a down circle and then a little dip and another down circle, doubled—no, tripled—and then a flowing tail. Altogether, the smoky track bears a striking resemblance to wire-rimmed spectacles.
I deduce that the dark speck in the distance, the tip of the invisible pen, is an aerobatic plane. And the show isn’t over yet. More loops and curves follow, etched with pale smoke into a plate of dark clouds.
Seen from my vantage point, the skywriting unfurls from right to left, Hebrew style. Like Belshazzar who saw the hand writing on the wall (Daniel 5), I’m wondering what it means.
And then, just like that, the line of smoke suddenly ends. The work just completed is already dispersing into soft-edged smudge, and then it blends out entirely, becoming indistinguishable from the cloud behind.
It’s sad to see, like good vaudeville at the end, when they leave you wanting more. All that work and artistry, dissolving into thin air.
Something like preaching.
The half-life of most sermons is pretty short. I sometimes had trouble remembering on Tuesday the one that I had delivered only two days before. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the lasting impact we preachers aspire to.
I kept the manuscripts, two file drawers full plus a few folders more. It’s nice to have something to show for all the hours invested. (Yes, I moved them all to the new place.) But the manuscript is not the sermon, not completely, not quite. It’s a snapshot of the sky, but not the ride in the plane. The actual sermon, it seems to me, is written in the empty air between voice and ear as the words fade into the resonance of the space.
So we preachers trail our smoke across the sky, wondering if it looks anything like the vision in our heads, wondering if it makes any sense to those who are watching, wondering if it will matter tomorrow or next week or, as we hope, forever.
But hold on. Back in the sky, the line of smoke has begun again with new swoops and swirls. Undeterred by the short life of the first effort, the pilot is uncorking more bright flourishes and smoky turns. The loops this time are horizontal, Möbius strips twisted and joined in midair, set off against the darkness of the gathering storm.
And now the skywriting stops again. I guess that’s it, at least for today, the end of Act II and the final curtain. I’m left wondering. What about after? What if anything will remain when the smoke clears?
Perhaps I’ll remember how the first loops looked like clown glasses, but without the fake nose. Or maybe what will stick is the feeling—the sheer, soaring joy of the performance.
I did look up, at least for a few minutes, and that may count for something. For me, lifting up the eyes and lifting up the heart seem connected somehow.
Was I changed by what I saw? Has it nudged the course of my life a bit? That’s hard to say. All I know for sure is that I watched. And also, that I wouldn’t mind seeing what the pilot puts up there next time. In fact, I’d make a reservation if I knew where and when.
That’s one of the good things about preaching. We do know where and when. Church. Next Sunday. Usual time.
And, last I heard, reservations are optional.
Ken Rummer, a retired Presbyterian pastor, writes about life and faith from the middle of Iowa by the High Trestle Trail. His previous posts can be found at presbyterianmission.org/today/author/krummer