Dear friends,

I found myself, typical morning decaf in hand, sitting on my front porch on Monday morning making a valiant effort to find a regular breath. Inhale… exhale. It’s been a long week. The parish profile is finding its final version. We’re moving forward into the next phase of transition, God willing. The world continues to move in ways that confound, with challenges in our news feeds. The turning toward summer is upon us, with heat and the mountains visible on the horizon. So much feels like it’s getting birthed, and certainty is hard to find. It’s been hard to catch my breath. Inhale… exhale.

But as I sat in the rays of sun shining through our red maple and feeling the wind blowing gently across my face, riffling the pages of my prayer journal, I recognized the rhythm. The in and out, back and forth of God’s own breath in the air. And I began to find that regular breath of my own, in concert with the earth and the seasons.

Ruach, that Spirit movement, the wind that blows across the darkness and brings life into all places and spaces, is there wherever we seek it. The second verse of Genesis tells us, ‘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. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.’ There is darkness, then there is breath. And then there is light.

Some of us are having a hard time finding room to breathe right now, and the hope lies in our earliest stories of God’s Creation: when we take time to pay attention, the Spirit inhabits us, and the darkness passes away into clarity, goodness, light, and life. This is the rhythm, of seasons and breath and the world as a whole.

I hope you’ll find yourself some time to sit and find the Breath that Breathes Life this week, beloved. Still yourself and listen. Inhale… exhale. You’ll notice that God is with you everywhere and always, if you do.

Jules