Ground to air or Air to ground?

Factual Questions
1

Does lightning come from the clouds to hit something on the ground, or do the clouds ‘attract’ a point in the ground and the lightning starts from there?

I was led to believe that lightning started from the ground and then reached the clouds-is this true?

2

It happens both ways.

3

There’s a good explaination about 2/3 of the way down this page http://thunder.msfc.nasa.gov/primer/primer2.html