One early spring afternoon I heard sandhill cranes overhead. I could see the flock’s surprisingly low V-formation as it headed north on its migratory path. Suddenly the formation broke, and individual cranes appeared to be flapping every which way. They had found a thermal, an updraft of warm air, and, catching it, gracefully rose higher and higher with minimal exertion. After riding this thermal to its peak, the cranes would then glide in a gradual descent on their path of migration until they found another one—an energy-efficient way to travel.

How do we, like these cranes, access a higher plane of action—for us, a spiritual one? In her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy writes, “Advancing to a higher plane of action, thought rises from the material sense to the spiritual, from the scholastic to the inspirational, and from the mortal to the immortal” (p. 256). Thought rises to “a higher plane of action” through spiritual sense. The Apostle Paul explained the difference between material sense and spiritual sense when he wrote to his friends in Corinth, “We are looking all the time not at the visible things but at the invisible. The visible things are transitory: it is the invisible things that are really permanent” (II Corinthians 4:18, J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English).

We cannot see thermals with our eyes, but birds that depend on them for soaring find and utilize them naturally. Likewise, spiritual sense cannot be seen with the eyes. But humanity’s innate desire to seek and know divine goodness helps us realize that there’s much more to life than what the physical senses grasp.