Why the Sky Lives So High

When the world was young and new, when the great forests were still learning to grow tall and the rivers were still finding their paths to the sea, the sky sat very close to the earth. Nyame, the Supreme Being who had created all things, lived in that sky and could look down and see every face, hear every voice, and feel every breath of every creature he had made.

In those days, people lived easily and freely. They planted yams and millet in fields that stretched into the mist. They pounded fufu in their courtyards. They cooked great pots of soup over open fires. And because the sky was so low, all of this happened just beneath the face of Nyame himself.

At first, this pleased him. He loved to watch his creation and hear the songs that rose from the villages at night.

But gradually, things changed.

The women, when they were pounding fufu, swung their pestles so high that they struck the sky on every upswing. "Sorry, Nyame!" they would call, but they kept pounding. When old men stretched after a long day's work, their fingers grazed the clouds. Children playing in the courtyards would reach up and pull pieces of sky down like fruit.

Then came the day that changed everything. A woman cooking palm soup reached up to wipe the steam from her face, and accidentally smeared her oily, peppery hands across the face of the sky itself.

Nyame was silent for a long time.

He called the animals together, and the trees, and the mountains, and the rivers. He said: "I have made you. I have given you the rain and the sun, the seasons and the seeds. But you do not treasure what you have been given. You treat what is holy as if it were an ordinary thing."

No one could argue with him.

"Very well," said Nyame. And he rose upward, higher and higher, until the sky was far above the tallest tree, above the highest mountain, above the top of the harmattan wind. He went so far that people could no longer see his face, only the colour of the sky he carried with him: blue in the daytime, black at night, and gold at the edges of morning and evening when he paused to look down.

From that day on, when people wanted to speak to Nyame, they had to lift their eyes and their voices toward the heavens. He was still there, always there, but he would not be touched again without permission.

And this is why, when you look up at the sky on a clear day, you see no face looking back, only the vast, high home of a God who remembers what it feels like to be taken for granted.