Wind, Spirit, Dust

Cabezon in the Rio Puerco Valley, NW of Albuquerque

Photograph by Jeffrey Louden

Nicodemus said to Jesus, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ 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.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?”

I grew up on the south side of Chicago in a house with five four-room apartments built by my German great-grandfather in the late 1880’s.  My sister and I shared a small room and a bed.  Like most of the windows on that side of the house, ours looked out at a brick wall twelve inches away.  In summer we heard soft voices of pigeons on the roof and animated conversations of families around us.  We were all related, or seemed like we were, as four generations of immigrants gave way to “real Americans.”  There was one empty lot on our street – 25 ft by 175 ft – the largest open space we could imagine.  Everyone called it the prairie.

Now when I pick up the morning paper I look east to mark the place where the sun rises over the Sandias.  I look west to a row of dormant volcanoes on the mesa and farther west to what we call Mount Taylor, a mountain sacred to the Pueblo and Navajo peoples who call it by other names.  Standing in the bright expanse, I think of the long slim patch of light I was just able see if I leaned out far enough from that first window and twisted left or right.  

The Windy City has nothing on spring winds racing across New Mexico.  My iron gate rattles.  Trees dance.  Juniper pollen fills the air.  Not everyone loves this time of year.  Wind has its own season.  God’s spirit too blows more forcefully than we want, shaping us in ways we did not anticipate.  Like Nicodemus, we watch our best efforts turn to sand, shifting with the winds.  We find ourselves moving into a future we did not plan, rubbing the dust from our eyes. 

          Anne Morawski

          Campus Pastor

          University of New Mexico