Who has seen the wind?

This little poem was introduced to me by someone (I don't remember who) when I was very, very small, maybe 4 or 5. It might have been at my Episcopal Montessori school. Poor Christina Rossetti. Nobody really likes her that much. Her poetry pales in comparison to her brother's creation, and it's true that much of it is infected with some of the most cringe-worthy attributes of Victorian sentimentality.

But this little poem stays with me. I remember the slowly dawning understanding as I took in what may have been my first experience of metaphor, as well as what might have been my first intellectual "understanding" of God.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you.
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I.
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.

Today, we've got a wind advisory. My office has a huge window - so tall that if I stood on the sill and raised up my hands I still couldn't touch the top. Through the opaque blind (I'm not really supposed to open it) I mostly see a bus stop. But there are two trees with their trunks out of my eye line, one on either side of the window. Their branches meet right in the middle of the frame, and the wind is rattling them pretty briskly.

It's fairly common knowledge that the etymology of "Spirit" comes from words for "wind" "breath", etc, from several languages. So it's not new. Wind is a good, old, tested metaphor for God, the Spirit. The bible's bursting with it.

"The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit."
John 3:8

At least, before meteorology. Now we sort of know where it's coming from, and we sort of know where it's going, and we kind of know why it's doing what it does. But the physics of wind are fascinating and opaque to me. Where does all that energy come from? even if I understood the physics I still lack a Prime Mover.

Wind is very good for me. As soon as it starts up I feel better. That little Rossetti poem starts to hum in my head - it's like a spiritual lullabye. I always hear it and feel a little more okay about dealing with the existence of God. If I can believe in wind, I say to myself, then I can believe in God. And it's easy to believe in wind. I am not the least bit conflicted about it. As soon as it's windy, every moment I spend in it starts morphing into a small Sacred experience. Or at least, everything that happens to me in the wind transforms without protest into a metaphor for some part of the spiritual experience, and so I understand and experience things spiritually much more naturally than usual. I like watching what it does to trees, and to water, and to street trash. I love to stand in the wind. I love especially wind that's strong enough to make me doubt for a second my ability to stand upright. I like to lean forwards and backwards into gusts, and feel myself slightly buoyed up. I like fighting it for my clothes and papers and hair and umbrella. I like it when it wins, and snatches things away from me. I've never forgotten a bit of G.K. Chesterton I once read:

For instance, there is a current impression that it is unpleasant to have to run after one's hat. Why should it be unpleasant to the well-ordered and pious mind? Not merely because it is running, and running exhausts one. The same people run much faster in games and sports. The same people run much more eagerly after an uninteresting; little leather ball than they will after a nice silk hat. There is an idea that it is humiliating to run after one's hat; and when people say it is humiliating they mean that it is comic. It certainly is comic; but man is a very comic creature, and most of the things he does are comic - eating, for instance. And the most comic things of all are exactly the things that are most worth doing - such as making love. A man running after a hat is not half so ridiculous as a man running after a wife.

Now a man could, if he felt rightly in the matter, run after his hat with the manliest ardour and the most sacred joy. He might regard himself as a jolly huntsman pursuing a wild animal, for certainly no animal could be wilder. In fact, I am inclined to believe that hat-hunting on windy days will be the sport of the upper classes in the future. There will be a meet of ladies and gentlemen on some high ground on a gusty morning. They will be told that the professional attendants have started a hat in such-and-such a thicket, or whatever be the technical term. Notice that this employment will in the fullest degree combine sport with humanitarianism. The hunters would feel that they were not inflicting pain. Nay, they would feel that they were inflicting pleasure, rich, almost riotous pleasure, upon the people who were looking on. When last I saw an old gentleman running after his hat in Hyde Park, I told him that a heart so benevolent as his ought to be filled with peace and thanks at the thought of how much unaffected pleasure his every gesture and bodily attitude were at that moment giving to the crowd.

At the risk of being crass, having never suffered horribily at the hands of a tornado or hurricane, I appreciate that the metaphor continues there, in the awesome, fearsome, old-testament ferocity and mercilessness of a Yahweh -- how the very same phenomenon that lightly ruffles a baby's hair, that's described as "caressing" is the same one that shatters lives into splinters. I appreciate that it's easy and natural to anthropomorphize the wind. I used to talk to it, and think it was "playing" with me. As I said, poems talk about the wind "caressing" something. Reporters talk of the "angry" and "punishing" winds. We name storms. I appreciate that this process helps us to deal with the phenomenon in ways we can understand, that it's the human way, irrelevant as our psychology may be to the wind itself. I don't necessarily like it, but it's true, in a solid, undoubtable way, and that's hopeful and comforting to me.

The metaphor doesn't properly account for the personal relationship with God part of the Sacred experience. One I talked about here and with which I have struggled constantly through my journey. I've seen it work too strongly through many deeply grounded people to dismiss it entirely as "naming hurricanes". It always comes down to the conflict between the tender personal relationship-having God (Jesus?) and Yahweh, the seemingly irrational, unfathomable phenom-like force of nature that blows through the Old Testament. Job shudders at his power:

"Indeed I know that this is so; but how can a mortal be just before God?
If one wished to contend with him, one could not answer him once in a thousand.
He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength-- who has resisted him, and succeeded?--
he who removes mountains, and they do not know it, when he overturns them in his anger;
who shakes the earth out of its place, and its pillars tremble;
who commands the sun, and it does not rise; who seals up the stars;
who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the Sea;
who made the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the chambers of the south;
who does great things beyond understanding, and marvelous things without number.
Look, he passes by me, and I do not see him; he moves on, but I do not perceive him.
He snatches away; who can stop him? Who will say to him, 'What are you doing?"

Again and again, Yahweh thunders "Don't even TRY to understand me!" Are these warnings setting us up for the important lessons I soaked my head in here and here?

I dunno. And I've entirely lost track of my metaphor. For us to actually have a "relationship" with wind, (ie, wind power, etc) we do have to be able to understand it. I think I could pick up the thread here a bit. Something to do with practical understanding, a social gospel, etc, but by now you are thoroughly bored with it. In the meantime, it's windy. And I'm taking every opportunity I can to stand in it and mutter Victorian doggerel to myself.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you.
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I.
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.

Say a little prayer for little Emma

Emma, (the monkey in the middle of this photo) is almost 3, and she's pretty sick with a kidney infection. I'm worried about her, and wish I could give her a hug. (but she's far away in NC with the rest of the kidlets) I hope she feels better soon.

"Funky little fifth sentence meme"

I got this from Badger who tells you where she got it.

Rules:
1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to it).
3. Find the 5th sentence (or closest to it).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.


My sentence:

I cried anyhow.

Oh dear!

Some Walt Whitman

On the beach, at night,
Stands a child, with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.

Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower, sullen and fast, athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends, large and calm, the lord-star Jupiter;
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate brothers, the Pleiades.



From the beach, the child, holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower, victorious, soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.

Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,
With these kisses let me remove your tears;
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,
They shall not long possess the sky—shall devour the stars only in apparition:
Jupiter shall emerge—be patient—watch again another night—the Pleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal—all those stars, both silvery and golden, shall shine out again,
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again—they endure;
The vast immortal suns, and the long-enduring pensive moons, shall again shine.


Then, dearest child, mournest thou only for Jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?

Something there is,
(With my lips soothing thee, adding, I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter,
Longer than sun, or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant brothers, the Pleiades.

A quiz!

Oh, you know you love them. I found this one on Kate's blog, and I got the same score as she did. It's a little transparent, but then maybe I just know a little too much about saints. Anyway:


You are Julian of Norwich! It's all about God, to
you. You're convinced that the world has a
happy ending. Everyone else is convinced that
you're a closet hippie, but you love them
anyway.

Which Saint Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Which is cool. Except, generally, it is all about me. ;)

Julian of Norwich is just about my favourite female mystic, anyway. If you click on the link you'll find a brief biography and a few snips of her writings. One in particular that always moved me is:

Because of the great,
infinite love which God has for all humankind,
he makes no distinction in love between the blessed soul of Christ
and the lowliest of the souls that are to be saved . . .
We should highly rejoice that God dwells in our soul
and still more highly should we rejoice that our soul dwells in God.
Our soul is made to be God's dwelling place,
and the dwelling place of our soul
is God who was never made.

Also, there is a little song about Julian's message that always makes me smile.

Loud are the bells of Norwich and the people come and go
Here by the Tower of Julian I tell them what I know.

Ring out! Bells of Norwich, and let the winter come and go.
All shall be well again, I know.

Ring for the yellow daffodil, the flower in the snow.
Ring for the yellow daffodil, and tell them what I know.

Ring out! Bells of Norwich, and let the winter come and go.
All shall be well again, I know.

Love, like the yellow daffodil, is coming through the snow.
Love, like the yellow daffodil, is Lord of all I know.

Ring out! Bells of Norwich, and let the winter come and go.
All shall be well again, I know.

It's interesting to be reminded of her today. I was just thinking of posting a little something about the ways I try to escape the worst feelings and moods of my depression, when they come. There was something fuzzy there that I couldn't quite explain, but it boiled down to a little Zen-and-Christ-and-Daisy stew which sounds a lot like Julian's idea that nothing has any true existence but God's love, and that gosh darn it,

All shall be well
and all shall be well
and all manner of things shall be well.

Sometimes to me, faith, and the requirement to be like a little child manifests in a strange way, almost a stubbornness of optimisim, a pig-headed refusal to "face facts" about the world being a great big mess. Instead, a simple-minded "it'll all be okay" goes a long way.

I don't mean being an ostritch exactly, but something else. Oh, bah, this is not making sense. I mean, in a spasm of unhappiness or grief, sometimes you just need to cover your head with God's blanket. There's a disclaimer I should paste in here somewhere about this not being the only way or even a very good idea most of the time and that yes we've all got chances to pull up our bootstraps and do what needs doing, indeed, and we'd better do it soon.

But other times what's right is to close our eyes for a minute and think about daffodils. I remind myself that this wave of bad emotion is entirely unreal and has no substance when compared to the love and power of God.

And later I will roll up my sleeves and pull up my bootstraps and go about making sure that all of this unhappiness and pain is even less real.

Hello...

Lunchtime, and I'm alone in the office, keeping an eye on the front desk while some departmental meeting or other goes on. I work IN the department, but I'm not OF it, so that means I get to miss departmental meetings. Yay.

I haven't been posting...I haven't had many urges to post, and those that I have are soft and weak and usually crumble by the time I log on. But I've gotten several kind and concerned e-mails, and I "miss" all of the interaction of the Quaker blogging circle, though I'm still faithfully reading my ever-growing list.I have yet to do the blog-rolling thing, which would make it all a little more streamlined. Either I am lazy, or I kind of enjoy the moment of suspense when I click a link...will there be a new post, or won't there?

My struggles with depression have lightened somewhat, with a little help from Big Pharma. It's an industry I loathe almost as much as Big Oil, but there are some compromises you have to make, and a Christian Scientist I am not, even if I find Mrs. Eddy's tomb a peaceful spot for reflection. It is not perfect, and I still feel a bit weighed down at times, but the debilitating, crushing feelings have become much more rare, and that is a huge blessing.

Spiritually, things are quiet. Meeting has been difficult lately...the usual war between the sacred and the profane, and the profane is winning. Remarkably, I've been unable to get worked up about this. Normally I could participate in any number of overwrought conversations and posts about the struggle, but lately I just feel quieter about it, with a strengthening of my feeling that I must become as tender to members of the meeting as I can.

I've started studying ballet, the long-belated continuation of a dream that was put on hold by family circumstances a long, long time ago. It turns out there is a very good school a block from my work, and they have a generous work-study program, so I can take class for free, in return for a once-a-week shift. Once upon a time, I was fixated on ballet with the same sense of religious fanaticism that I brought to church. Idolatry? Certainly. But maybe more.

I'm afraid of tumbling into cliches, but I'm noticing the thousands of parallels between ballet and religious practice. Moreover, I'm learning a lot about the way I relate to the world, and especially to the spiritual world, by observing the way I am reacting to ballet. The metaphors of religion have often been used to describe ballet, and it's a familiar dichotomy, so I was somewhat aware of this going in. However, I have been surprised to see how personally these parallels have come into play for me.

There's a part of me that wonders if my embracing ballet is a bit of a substitute for the sense of sacredness that I am missing in meeting. Coincidentally, my ballet studio is housed in an old church...a huge, famous stained glass window makes up most of the back wall of our studio. But even the plainest serious ballet studio has obvious similarities to a sacred or holy place. You take off your shoes before you go in. There are vestments and habits...clothes reserved for this one activity. There are earnest acolytes. There are Masters. There are rules, and rituals, and routines. Dedication, discipline, perseverence, humility, fortitude...so many classical virtues are required to advance along the path. The perfection of a classically trained professional dancer seems as unattainable and desirable to a wobbly beginner as the perfection of a great saint and mystic seems to a humble sinner. There is no question about it. Ballet is High Church.

And in my passionate, bumbling love for it, I am learning a lot about my relation to Church and Sacredness.

If you asked a ballet dancer if the list above "was" ballet, they'd say, I am sure, "no." They would talk about how it was so much more...about the transcendence of movement, of becoming one with the music, of speaking the unspeakable through gesture. But if you asked them next, "if you took away the list of rules, etc, and left behind just the becoming one with the music, transcendence part, would it still be ballet?" I think the answer would also be "no." It might be dance, but it wouldn't be ballet.

And so I sit and stretch and think, do I love dance? Or do I love the legalistic formality of ballet? Or something else?

I don't know, exactly. It is this part of the metaphor that starts to get very uncomfortable for me. It requires more reflection. Many dancers will speak of the relief they feel in coming into the studio, a place that is literally sacred--"set apart" for one this thing of beauty and effort, where all the petty problems of "outside" melt away. And yet the same dancers will tell you how much they bring out of the studio, back to the world, when class is over.

There is no reason that sacredness need come only from forms. I believe this. But I've been in a "free movement" class where everyone was there for a different reason, and doing a different thing, with different levels of dedication, and it didn't have the same feeling of sacredness that a formal ballet class has for me.

Which has me examining how much I am relying on outside things/people for my sense of "sacred space". I can't seem to find the words for it, but what Liz wrote certainly has something to do with it. As I said, there is much more reflection to do.

But in a more micro-sense, I find it's not only my attitudes and thoughts about religion that are mirrored in ballet class, but also my experience in striving for faithfulness. As always, the spirit is willing...sometimes achingly willing, but the body remains pitifully weak. There are so many things to keep track of at once. Eyes front, chest up, shoulders down, knees stretched, hips turned out, elbows up, wrists down, heels forward, toes pointed, thighs pulled up, ribcage held under, stomach in, tail bone down, foot rotated...and every time you fix one thing, the next one breaks.

How many days do I start out with a similar list? Be kind. Be strong. Open your mind. Guard your lips. Follow the Spirit's leading. Don't outrun the Spirit. Don't say No to God. Don't say Yes to your self. Ego in. Heart out. Be humble. Be gentle with yourself. Don't let yourself get away with anything. React with wisdom. React with tenderness. Be discerning. Be open. Keep your brain quiet. Proclaim the Good News...

And yet in both cases, the minute you begin to strain to do all these impossible things at once, it all becomes twice as hard. And as soon as you can let go a bit, things begin to fall into place.

When I'm struggling to get a pliè right, I think, why do I want this perfect? Am I doing this for its own sake, to seek perfection and faithfulness in this one movement? Am I doing it because I want to be noticed by the teacher? Am I doing it because I feel insecure next to the girl in front of me, who does it better? Am I remembering that mastering this movement will lead me on to hundreds more, which all build on the perfection of this one "simple" bending of the knees?

When we move across the floor, and I've pictured the motion a thousand times a thousand times, but halfway through I turn the wrong way, why do I stop with shame and waste time berating myself? What am I getting out of a little performance of apologizing? Does it really help the class, or my improvement as a dancer?

And stretching...a good old Quaker metaphor. You lean just a little farther, lift just a little higher, and it hurts, but bearably, and it makes such a difference in everything else.

As I sweated and trembled through class last night, full of mixed feelings and deep concentration, these were some of the things that were dancing in the back of my mind.