Instead of kvetching and fuming while sitting in traffic this morning, I took to thinking about the very last scene of the most recent Saving Grace episode. For those of you who may not watch television or don’t watch Saving Grace it is about a wild fun-loving female police officer in a small Oklahoma town named Grace who is being followed by an angel named “Earl”. Earl is just about the last image of an angel you’d expect because he looks like any old cowboy that likes to listen to good music in a honky tonk and enjoy life in general. Pretty much during all the Saving Grace episodes, only Grace could see Earl much less his big white wings but I think maybe Grace’s best friend, Rhetta, has had some “almost” sitings. Anyway, last night the very last scene was of Rhetta looking for Grace in her house only to walk into Grace’s bathroom and look through the window to the neighbor’s house to see Grace helping her drug addled neighbor get up and to the car to go to rehab and the glow of Earl’s big white wings surrounding them both. Rhetta sat there smiling a big ole grin with tears shining down her face.

So of course I began wondering what it would be like if I had big ole white wings, like Earl, coming up and out of my back. At first I pretended that my wings were so big that they could surround my car and hide me inside of them but then I couldn’t figure out how they could come out of my back and surround the car like I was envisioning, so I just “saw” them sticking up from my back, folded in with the tips of them touching the roof of my car. I could feel my wings taking up most of the room in the car and thought about how fun that would be if someone could see my wings from another car. I did ponder a bit if in the metaphysical realm, I could flap my wings out through the sides of the car–undaunted by the material aspects of metal.

Don’t worry, I haven’t lost my mind. I know that I don’t have wings coming out of my back. But I think exercising our imagination like this is good for us now and again. Besides, it’s a great way for me to explain why the very part of my shoulder blades that I would imagine wings would come out of, if there were such things, always seem to get sore and achy.

When I was a young girl, I could spend hours watching my Cockatiel preening himself. I loved it when I would give him a little shower to watch how he would stretch out his wings parallel to his body, turn his head sideways and up and then flap his wings back into his body and shake his head. Turns out, I’ve spent quite a lot of my observing of beings and things on watching birds and how they are. I’m fascinated by all aspects of them, and most of all with their wings. Makes sense that I would take my observations a step further in my imagination and wonder what it would feel like to have wings. Leave it to me, though, to worry about how to maneuver them around in a small sports car.

Anyway, I believe that when we let ourselves imagine something fully, like having wings, there are all kinds of things falling into place in the background of our mind and spirit. I am pretty sure that at least a few great inventions, came to be through a process much like this one. Besides, it’s great fun to really let yourself pretend about something you love (not to be confused with obsession….).

So next time your driving in rush hour traffic, you may want to look at the car in front of you cuz the person driving it just may have wings….