What startled me when I spotted a Snowy Egret in Tennessee was not his rarity but his wings.

   When the wind lifts the curtains on my office porch they become wings.

   A Pacific wind merged the surf, my wife's dress and the clouds into a sea of wings.

   So many of my thousands of photographs symbolize flight.

   Flying dreams deliver the comfortable surprise of winged flight and the disappointment of awakening without them. 

   Patients under anesthesia routinely report the comfort of floating "as if they had wings."

   Athletes in the "zone" talk of flowing free as birds. The sexual experience may release lovers from earth's gravity.

  Underneath all the hard work, the struggles, the heartbreaks, the endless anxieties of delivering care to the sick an wounded, caregivers pray for angel's wings.

   Wings are comfort. That signal to me that when Death takes my body, my spirit will be freed of its weight. 

   Always seeking the wisdom of children, I asked my five year old grandson, "Where is God?" 

   Kids always know this answer. Reed winged his right arm skyward and proclaimed triumphantly, "Up there!"   

   -Reverend Erie Chapman

Photographs by Erie