Blue skies smilin' at me
Nothin' but blue skies do I see

Why is it that a beautiful day fills us with “pie in the sky” ideas of “building castles in the air”? How could we even imagine in these days of extra-galactic discoveries that the sky would be “the limit”? The sky appeals to our basic senses without calling for reasoning, leaps of faith, or even intuition because we can see it. Of course, that means we want to touch the sky as well.    

Discoveries about the universe are coming in “out of the clear blue sky,” literally. We hear about infant stars, galaxies older than we can imagine and even, on Saturn’s moon, Titan’s Magic Island. We can see photos from the Hubble telescope, read about time bending, and imagine the surface of Pluto.

What we don't need to imagine is the sky. As impossible as it is to touch, it gives color to all that is at the limits of our understanding. This is where countless movie-makers have envisioned we would first notice extraterrestrials. Mary Poppins may still be sitting on a cloud up there. Chicken Little declared the sky was falling.

Bluebirds singin' a song 
Nothin' but bluebirds all day long

Yet the sky remains exactly where it always has been and just as out-of-reach. Impossible though it may be to touch, the sky fills us with a sense of strength. Possibilities. It's very elusiveness gives us room to grow, to reach, to never actually find that so-called limit. Yet with it comes a sense of happiness and of security, like that of a child tossed up and safely caught by a loving parent.

For, no matter how high we fly, we will always come back to earth.

Never saw the sun shinin' so bright
Never saw things goin' so right.

(As sung by Ella Fitzgerald)