wind
Spirit Wind
Genesis 1:2 the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
Genesis 8:1 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided;
Genesis 8:1 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and all the domestic animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided;
"THE WIND BLOWS WHERE IT CHOOSES, AND YOU HEAR THE SOUND OF IT,
BUT YOU DO NOT KNOW WHERE IT COMES FROM OR WHERE IT GOES.
SO IT IS WITH EVERYONE WHO IS BORN OF THE SPIRIT.”
BUT YOU DO NOT KNOW WHERE IT COMES FROM OR WHERE IT GOES.
SO IT IS WITH EVERYONE WHO IS BORN OF THE SPIRIT.”
In the Celtic tradition, a slight gust of air—a mischievous fairy wind (gaoithe sidhe)—often awakens what is stirring within. It happened to C. S. Lewis on a September night in 1931, when a sudden whirlwind on an Oxford footpath changed his life. He and his friend J. R. R. Tolkien were strolling Addison’s Walk, talking about metaphor and myth. Lewis had always delighted in Norse mythology, but up until this time he’d dismissed myth (and religious faith) as no more than “lies breathed through silver.” Just as Tolkien was pressing his case for divine mystery set loose in the world, a rush of air “came so suddenly on the still, warm evening and sent so many leaves pattering down that we thought it was raining. We held our breath,” said Lewis, caught up in the ecstasy of the moment. He later confessed that his readiness to believe stemmed from this experience.
The movement of air is a mystery, whether we feel it in our bodies or trace it on a weather map. It stirs as a dust devil rising from the Kansas plains, a “perfect storm” off the Grand Banks in the North Atlantic, a baby’s first gasp for air, or an elderly woman’s last breath in a nursing home. Wind arouses a sense of the ineffable. God rides a forty-knot wind across the southern Pacific, giving rise to one-hundred-foot rogue waves. But God pants just as readily in the pains of a woman giving birth. The “wind without” is as astonishing as the “wind within.”
Lane, Belden C.. The Great Conversation (p. 75-ff). Oxford University Press.
The movement of air is a mystery, whether we feel it in our bodies or trace it on a weather map. It stirs as a dust devil rising from the Kansas plains, a “perfect storm” off the Grand Banks in the North Atlantic, a baby’s first gasp for air, or an elderly woman’s last breath in a nursing home. Wind arouses a sense of the ineffable. God rides a forty-knot wind across the southern Pacific, giving rise to one-hundred-foot rogue waves. But God pants just as readily in the pains of a woman giving birth. The “wind without” is as astonishing as the “wind within.”
Lane, Belden C.. The Great Conversation (p. 75-ff). Oxford University Press.
He is dark-light and day-star, the Christ of my life, leading me deeper, leading me further, into the thicket of God.
There is a time for dreams to die with folded wings and muted heart.
And yet my hope eternal springs because of Him, the One I love, who holds my “Yes” for years to come.
There is a moment between dark and dawn, when winds are still and faith is numb.
It is a still-point for God and me.
I know the gift He offers: the Breath of life. It will grope through night until the dawn.
Attributed to Saint John of the Cross though I cannot find this in any of his published works — PHL
There is a time for dreams to die with folded wings and muted heart.
And yet my hope eternal springs because of Him, the One I love, who holds my “Yes” for years to come.
There is a moment between dark and dawn, when winds are still and faith is numb.
It is a still-point for God and me.
I know the gift He offers: the Breath of life. It will grope through night until the dawn.
Attributed to Saint John of the Cross though I cannot find this in any of his published works — PHL
We confess you to be text-maker, text-giver, text-worker, and we find ourselves addressed by your making, giving, working. So now we bid you, re-text us by your spirit. Re-text us away from our shallow loves, into your overwhelming gracefulness. Re-text us away from our thin angers, into your truth-telling freedom. Re-text us away from our lean hopes, into your tidal promises. Give us attentive ears, responsive hearts, receiving hands; Re-text us to be your liberated partners in joy and obedience, in risk and gratitude. Re-text us by your word become wind. Amen. Montreat conference/May 30, 2000
Walter Brueggemann. Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: The Prayers of Walter Brueggemann (p. 62). Kindle Edition.
Walter Brueggemann. Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: The Prayers of Walter Brueggemann (p. 62). Kindle Edition.
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise.
In my end is my beginning.
Eliot, T. S.. Collected Poems, 1909-1962 East Coker V (pp. 189-190). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise.
In my end is my beginning.
Eliot, T. S.. Collected Poems, 1909-1962 East Coker V (pp. 189-190). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Holy Thursday
‘Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
The children walking two & two, in red & blue & green,
Grey-headed beadles walk’d before, with wands as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul’s they like Thames’ waters flow.
O what a multitude they seem’d, these flowers of London town!
Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own.
The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands.
Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song,
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among.
Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor;
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.
By William Blake (1757-1827)
‘Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
The children walking two & two, in red & blue & green,
Grey-headed beadles walk’d before, with wands as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul’s they like Thames’ waters flow.
O what a multitude they seem’d, these flowers of London town!
Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own.
The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands.
Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song,
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among.
Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor;
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.
By William Blake (1757-1827)