My study window is whistling.
The gales forecast for most of today have arrived sounding like a particularly belligerent orchestra tuning up in front of live microphones and the mixer at full volume.
The yellow warning includes the advice to stay at home 'unless your journey is essential.'
So I suppose washing the car isn't an option either, unless I stand upwind when throwing the odd bucket of water to rinse it.
And there comes a stage in life when walking into the wind, with my jacket open and held above my head like a sail, is not OK for someone my age - which is a pity.
It isn't even Lent, but already the sound of the wind pushing at the windows, whistling through the window vents, is a foretaste of Pentecost.
"Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them." Acts 2.
No Yellow weather warnings in those days!
Or like that night when an embarrassed Nicodemus came for a confidential counselling session with Jesus and was told what he should already have known:
"You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it’s headed next. That’s the way it is with everyone ‘born from above’ by the wind of God, the Spirit of God.”
Wild. Unpredictable. Powerful. Unseen but visible in its effects. Invisible but most audible in words of wonder, love and praise. Wind whistling at the window, renewable energy looking for people to renew.
The tapestry was done some years ago. Eucharist and Pentecost. Thanksgiving and Gift. Comfort and Comforter. Wind, fire and wine, the energisers of community.
And maybe the boy in me that remembers using my jacket as a sail is one of those playful parables for those different stages of life when we have been impelled, shoved, given an impetus not our own. The Holy Spirit as boisterous companion, swirling around us with gusto and encouraging a kind of abandon that takes us out of ourselves.
And the exhilaration of running down a hill, jacket up, with the wind in our sails, not sure when or even how we would stop.
My study window is still whistling; the wind still blows; up to 60 mph says the yellow warning. Like the Spirit of God, "we have no idea where it comes from or where it's headed next."
Veni Spiritus Sanctus.
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