Cloudburst

I looked above my front door through the arched window at a flash I thought I saw.  It had been a while since I had seen the familiar bright light.  Then I saw it again clearly through the arched panes.  Wow, what a welcome sight.  The high today had reached 101, but it was cooling slowly since the sun was about to set.  Rain had not been predicted for my area.  I went outside to enjoy the show.

What a show it was.  The sky lit up for over an hour with all the ensuing thunderbooms clapping overhead.  Loved the show.  It was the 3rd time today that I was reminded of one who had brought me my life just a short time ago.

First, I was watching a TV movie in which a young woman and a young man had fallen in love.  She told him about halfway through the movie that she had leukemia.  The woman had touched the young man's life deeply before she finally passed on to the next world.  At the end of the movie, in a stirring set of lines, he compared the young woman's affect on him to the wind.  She had swept into his horizons giving him life, changing him, and leaving him with her spirit before she passed on.  It was a touching ending.

The young man's speech about the wind reminded of a passage from the New Testament that I remember so well from studying Greek in college.  The Greeks had the idea that the wind and the spirit of someone shared the same characteristics.  They reflected that in their language.  Pneuma was their word for wind and spirit.  The ideas are different in English as shown in our having two words for the ideas.  But, not for the Greeks.  The passage I remembered was a saying of Jesus, "The wind (spirit) blows where it desires to blow.  Nobody sees its origin or destination.  All those who are born from the spirit (wind) are just like that."  People interpret this passage as a pun on the words wind and spirit, translating them as such in that order.  But, both words could be translated as spirit and both words could be translated as wind .  Now there's a thought.  We are children of the wind - making our presence known, leaving our impressions even after we're gone.

Then, about 8:30 tonight, at the end of a very typical hot August day, the wind began blowing ferociously.  The neighbor's fence split and fell to the ground in two sections from its force.  It was the advance guard of the tremendous downpour that followed.  Now the storm is gone although I can still hear the rumbling of thunder in the distance.  The wind announced the coming refreshment to the parched ground with the wind that swept through with the storm.  It brought lifegiving elements to everything alive, including me.  Then it left.

So this evening, in three reminders, I have been alive with the spirit (wind) of one who breezed through my life, refreshed it with lifegiving elements, and covered me forcefully so that I should never forget the absolute joy, zest for living, and love for this one that I felt .

Let the wind (spirit) blow!!!