I love the way the air changes and smells this time of year in Minnesota. A little cooler with just a touch of apple and falling leaves and pumpkin spice. So much shifts all around us. The steady beat of God’s creation slowly breathes into a new season. It’s certainly good sleeping weather, as Minnesotans like to say.
After a year of almost everything being postponed or canceled, it also seems that much of the regular hectic kickoff of so many things starting in-person is back. School. Sports. Choir. Church. Music.
Schedules are pouring out. Even as some things continue to ebb and close with the Delta variant among the unvaccinated, it seems that the pace of life as it was before, which often felt like too much, will rise again. Both for your family and mine.
It’s a lot. I often wonder how we managed to fit it all in. It can feel like there isn’t much time to even breathe between all the things.
I’ve been thinking a lot about breath these days and how our breathing focuses our attention. We hear in Psalm 150:6 “Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!”
God animates the world through breath, in Hebrew the word is: ruach (pronounced roo-akh). The Spirit of God breathes into all life. Into us.
I’m trying to breathe a little slower through this season. Gleaning what I can from the last 18 months and listening to God’s movement in the air. I know I’m still not going to be breathing perfectly. It’s okay to be a recalcitrant mystic. Some days are going to overwhelm and confound even the best of us. The pace likes to bulldoze.
But there is grace in the air too. I’m breathing in that also. I hope you are too.
In God’s animating breath,
Pastor Peter
