Like a Mighty Wind

As we approach the celebration of Pentecost we pause to consider the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit.  The first person of the Trinity is God the Father.  Known as the Creator of the universe, he is awesome.  And then there is Jesus the Son, the second person of the Trinity.  Jesus, by his death and resurrection, paid the price for all the sins of all humankind for all time.  That makes Jesus pretty awesome, too.  The problem is that sometimes the Father and the Son seem just a little too awesome, a little too big for me to wrap my arms around.  What I long for is the God who knows me personally, and that is where God the Holy Spirit makes his entrance.

In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is depicted as a dove, a flame, and as the wind.  I can most easily relate to the Holy Spirit by envisioning him as the wind (Acts 2:1-2).   “On the day of Pentecost all the Lord’s followers were together in one place.  Suddenly there was a noise from heaven like the sound of a mighty wind! It filled the house where they were meeting.”  I can relate to the wind because my husband, John, taught me how to windsurf back when we were dating.  If there was a mighty wind when we got off work in the evening, we would race to the lake of our northern Wisconsin childhoods and get on our boards.  On windless summer evenings we’d rush to the same lake and water ski or sometimes canoe with the loons through glassy calm waters.  On any given evening, it was the wind that told us what to do with our free time together.

Have you ever paused to listen to the wind?  If you have a kite, a mighty wind might tell you to head to an open field.  A calmer current of air might tell you to wait for another day.  If you have a sailboat, a mighty wind might beckon you to lash everything to the deck and head to the open sea.  A gentle breeze might tell you to bring a grill on board and enjoy a tranquil, sunset meal.

While learning how to windsurf, I spent a lot of time doing headlong somersaults into the water.  John, who had learned earlier and more quickly, spent a lot of time sailing patient circles around me.  Learning to sense and to align ourselves with the movement of the Holy Spirit is a similarly personal journey, but it is one that scripture invites each of us to take.  Every day the same scripture readings are proclaimed in every Catholic church throughout the world.  I envision those readings as a wind emanating from the pulpit and blowing across the congregation.  When we are told by Jesus to forgive seventy times seven, it is like a mighty wind.  The strength of that particular scripture should cause each of us to grab our hats and hang onto our pews, as the Holy Spirit reveals, specifically, to whom we need to offer forgiveness.  At another mass we may hear the comforting message that Jesus heals the broken hearted.  These words arrive like a gentle breeze easing open the door of personal healing for wounds we’ve hidden deep within.  It is according to each person’s situation in life that the same wind delivers a different message.

John 3:8 proclaims, “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.”  To receive God’s personal direction for our lives, we must be keep watch for the wind that is the Holy Spirit.  If we will but turn our faces toward that spirit-filled wind, we will know whether to raise or lower our sails, to fly our kites or paddle our canoes.  We will feel the touch of the Holy Spirit and know that, no matter how awesome or big he is, our Triune God knows and loves each of us personally.

-Reprinted with permission from Heidi’s book, Homegrown Faith, Nurturing Your Catholic Family, Servant Books.

Copyright 2013 Heidi Bratton

Heidi Bratton

I heard a shocker the other day.  One evening while she was out with a few girlfriends, a man approached my sister-in-law and started flirting.  It had only been a few months since she and her husband had exchanged wedding rings, so she happily flashed him her diamond and turned back to her friends.  The guy was not put off.  Instead he said, “Hey, it’s okay with me if you have a husband.  I mean, how serious is your marriage, anyway?”

I was stunned.  I could see questioning an existing dating relationship, but to completely brush off an existing marriage?!  The guy’s question was outright vulgar, but it got me thinking.  What if all married people asked this brazen question of themselves on a regular basis?

When we have an argument with our spouse, what if you and I were to ask ourselves, “Just how serious is my marriage, anyway?”  Are our marriages worth the humbling work needed to reconcile as quickly as possible, or are we going to pout or shout or talk behind our spouse’s back until we “win” this one?  When someone other than our spouse flirts with us, what if we were to ask, “Just how serious is my marriage, anyway?”  Would we still entertain this so-called innocent banter, or would we turn away and purposefully refocus our romantic thoughts on the one to whom we said, “I do”?

Really, why is it that we willingly work 40 to 70 hours a week to further our careers, or bury ourselves in 30 years’ worth of debt in order to own a home, but think that a marriage ought to be capable of running on cruise control?  Is it because there is no entity out there bestowing awards or promotions on us for having the Best Marriage of the Year?  Perhaps.  Personally, I think we are also flat out lazy.  We are so easily distracted from any pursuit that requires a long-term, personal investment, but especially from one offering no publicly acclaimed, material reward.

Frankly, I think we’re a bunch of suburban cowboys living in a gas grill world. We want the flames of love, ignited with just one sparkling courtship and wedding, to keep leaping high while we go off and grab a beer.  But marriage is not even remotely like a gas grill.  Marriage, by its very nature, requires a long-term, personal investment, and not even on eBay will we find a bottomless tank of pressurized love guaranteed to keep our union sizzling in our physical, emotional or spiritual absence.  Marriage is a campfire, not a gas grill.

Marriage is, however, the grandest adventure for which two lovers could ever sign up.  To find an activity parallel to the true adventure of marriage, we’d need to step away from our gas grills on our electrically-lit decks, hike over our automated sprinkler systems in our chemically green lawns, and envision just our spouse and ourself on the wide-open prairie surrounded by tumble weeds, lowing cattle, baying wolves, and outlaws.  Under such a vast and starry sky, building a modest campfire and simply staying alive would require our complete and shared attention.  We’d stay the warmest if we slept on the same side of the flames sharing bodily warmth and taking turns tending the embers and listening for the wolves and the outlaws.

Remember that guy who flirted with my sister-in-law?  He was an outlaw, bent on stealing from my brother-in-law, and our gas-grill world has made his job all too easy.

On this point a shout-out has to be given to the Catholic Church for teaching Natural Family Planning as the only morally acceptable way of determining family size.  Where artificial birth control and sterilization foster an always-available, gas-grill mind-set about sex, there is nothing quite as adventurous as NFP where spouses have to work together closely to keep both the love- and the life-giving elements of sex burning brightly.  Thank you, Catholic Magisterium, for pointing married couples toward the campfire mindset.

If we would tend to our marriages like real cowboys tend their campfires, then our marriages would be infinitely more capable of keeping the chill of apathy, affairs, and divorce at bay.  Striving to obtain and maintain a marriage atmosphere of campfire love would better permit the love of Christ to infuse, to warm, and to satisfy us in the sacrament of marriage.   Now what married person wouldn’t want that?

So from one married person to another, “Just how serious is your marriage, anyway?”

Copyright 2013 Heidi Bratton