I was flying from California to Kansas City, and night had fallen when the pilot announced over the intercom that if we looked out our windows we would see a once-in-a-lifetime sight. We were flying four thousand feet above normal cruising altitude to avoid a violent thunderstorm that was sweeping across western Kansas, he explained. I looked out my window and was indeed astonished. I was looking down on an unbroken sea of light, but light of a kind I had never before seen — Wordsworth's "light that never was on sea or land." It was so ethereal that simply to gaze on it was to feel peaceful. It was no exaggeration to say that it was a holy light.
— Huston Smith, The Soul of Christianity