gales that heave the sea in waves, stirrings in the
mind’s deep caves ---
aim your breath with steady power on your church, this
day, this hour.
Raise, renew the life we’ve lost, Spirit God of
Pentecost.
---Thomas Troeger, 1983
It was one of those days. The kind when you slap bugs
crawling up and down your back, and find it’s sweat pouring down your spine.
When your gaze across the blacktop of the supermart parking lot is crazed and
zagged by waves of rising heat. When the silence is so thick your ears ring
with it. When you walk bowlegged, just to keep your thighs from rubbing
together where they are chafed, from rubbing together on days just like this. Five
days, ten. All of them. It has been this
hot, this humid, this still, for. ev. er.
You have work to do. The heat, the stillness won’t stop you,
won’t keep you from working with skill, with dedication, with honor. Won’t cause
you to throw up your hands, throw in the towel, throw up the white flag of
surrender. You believe in the work you do, feel called to it, even. Leaving it
undone, or half-done, feels as wrong as planting without mulch to protect from
the harsh sun. Beside all that, you are no quitter, are you?
So you keep on.
But, playing with your sweaty curls, ruffling the hem of
your red-dusted work shirt, sending pecan leaves trembling is a freshening, a
breeze. You raise your eyes to the horizon, edge of disbelieving…but there
it is, again. You are still, almost afraid
to move for fear the wind will disappear. But you do. And it doesn’t.
And that wind. It renews. It envigorates. It restores the
joy to the work you were doing. It colors your shades of grey world, reminds
you how good, how life-giving, your labor was. Is.
The wind? It changes
everything.
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