To keep our heads up we have to be focused on the horizon, where earth borders sky. The sky is our easel of dreams and ambitions. Infinity exists above us, beckons us to explore, to reach out and up. In a metaphoric sense, the sky is our Father, the promise of a better future, a goal to strive for. Religious beliefs often give the sky as a source of beneficial forces, whether the Heaven of Christianity or Asgard of the Vikings, which was located in the heavens and was accessible only over the rainbow bridge, Bifrost. Sky is moderated by its opposite--the Earth with its pull of gravity--and is strengthened by its compliment--Fire and its relationship to the sun. Heat rises to put the sky into motion.

In parent-child relationships, Sky represents setting goals, having dreams, feeling hope about one's future. When we encourage a child, give them the freedom to reach out beyond themselves to pursue a goal, that is in tradition of the sky. Where there is yearning and imagination, there is the Sky.

There is a time to be down to earth. But imagination and creativity are important for success as well. When we were young we made a contract with ourselves: that someday we would do something important, that we would be somebody. As we shared these ambitions with others, we might have been ridiculed or discouraged. Get your feet on the earth, boy. Make sense! In the face of something less than encouragement, we probably stopped talking about these things, stopped using our imagination to place ourselves in a successful future. But if we stopped talking about our dreams, then we risked forgetting them. Once forgotten, we have settled to the ground and given up reaching out and up to the sky. Our heads go down, our shoulders too. We are beaten, feeling down, not up.

Every child needs a cheerleader, someone with confidence in them to reach the stars. If reaching never leads to grasping, the child will do the work to make adjustments, to reach elsewhere if necessary. But to have your hand pulled down by another, therein lie the origins of hopelessness and despair. As the African American Kansas poet Langston Hughes wrote, Hold fast your dreams. When dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. When dreams go, life is a barren field, frozen with snow. The capacity to pursue one's dream is made possible by the courage to begin reaching out, to persevere through disappointment. In this way, Fire complements Sky.

Of course, Sky has its limitations and its risks as well. We'll take a look at the dark side of sky on page two.