In December we shut the doors quickly behind us one by one and gather around words of life spoken against the cold and dark outside the frosted windows, against the cold and dark within, while candles burn steady as a constellation. But now,
The doors and windows are thrown open to blinding June sunlight; a motorcycle slowly rips the street from end to end, cuts through the dull hum of the electric window fans as we mumble the liturgy. Once a sparrow flew in through the door and drew slow, fluttering circles over our heads as we worshipped. We just kept at it; what else could we do?
And this breeze that breaches the windows is no friend to fire, flutters the flames right, then left, carving crazy wax sculptures as we stare. It’s the world got in, tossing banners and draperies, an unseen hoard of bearded invaders fingering our stuff, not finding much to value,
While those in the back pews with picnic plans plot their escape should it all drag on too long. And if the sermon just stopped —“Okay now, enough of that today”— who could be shocked, while this warm wind blows the lazy summer through our Sabbath?
And hasn’t this same breeze blown through my own days, made me a little sorry for my sins, want to love my family, learn to barbeque, sit on the back porch and plan a holiday while bees wander through the lillies? Is this the apostles’ mighty wind, blown steady and mild over the millennia, like a remnant of a Florida hurricane now watering grassy lawns across Ohio?
Or do I live for the moment (as I hope) at the gentle edges of a storm that somewhere even this moment is still raging, purging, renewing the face of the earth?
