The rhythm of writing again has felt like that moment
in the beginning of a yoga class when the instructor makes you sit up straight
and take slow and even inhales and exhales, breaths that simultaneously relax
you and make you realize how shallow your breathing gets during long, stressful
days. It is both conscious and unconscious, the realization that breath requires
attention, but not total control.
Even though things are busier than ever these days,
life feels like the cycle of yoga. It is about becoming aware of where things
are stressful and learning to laugh through inconveniences, to live truthfully,
and to appreciate the spontaneous ways God is always showing up in the world.
Perhaps it is naivety or a little bit of stupidity, or maybe it is just learning
to live with loosened grip and to stop taking life so seriously.
My friend and roommate Maddie has gotten me into the
habit of watching the movie “About Time” regularly since we started living
together. We don’t do a lot of TV watching, but when we do, it is probably that
movie or an episode of Gilmore Girls. About Time is possibly the most precious
movie ever, causing you to love Rachel McAdams even more than you thought
humanly possible and to have a soft spot in your heart for the awkward guy with
the huge crush on said rad girl. It is charming in the love-story sort of way,
but is also the type of movie with just enough of a glimpse into the realities
of life that you can’t help but watch it multiple times and see yourself in it.
The ending is my favorite, the moment when the guy who spent his whole life
travelling in time to create the perfect life realizes that life is too
beautiful to try and orchestrate it himself. That what seemed mundane and
ordinary is actually the best part of being alive.
My pastor gave a sermon yesterday about the cycles of
water and wind throughout the Bible. We moved from Genesis to Revelation,
seeing that the “Tohu Bohu” of chaos found in the waters of Genesis 1 are
located next to the wind, or “Ruach” of the Spirit. From the parting of the Red
Sea in Exodus to the baptisms in the gospels, where the chaos of water exists,
there the Spirit of God is also, making sense out of the disorder.
The themes of tohu bohu and ruach make sense within
both the biblical narrative and also within the script of my everyday life. I
move about in the waters of life’s chaos, shallow gasps turned into deep cycles
of breath and rhythm only by the ruach that sweeps over life and my soul.
Without such wind, the water literally feels like a flood, telling me life is
chaos, and it’s better to try and tame it than float in it.
And who could blame us to think this way, really? We
watch other people’s lives unfold on Instagram and feel the pressure of living
exciting lives, framed by cool pictures and great success stories. We want life
as extraordinary, not just ordinary.
But perhaps the most extraordinary thing about your
life and the world is that amidst the chaos of ordinary there is a ruach that rushes
over the tohu bohu. That in the middle of caring for a family or working a job
you hate or trying to figure out what to do with your life there is a ruach
that blows over the chaos, reminding you of presence – both God’s and the
invitation for you to be present today.
Life sometimes seems so ordinary that I think I would
be the time traveler who rearranged moments so they were more ordered or
exciting or picture worthy. Because when it seems like there is a possibility
that I can control the waters, my humanity will always choose power.
I am continually reminded that the more I try to
control things, the worse they get. I become more powerless when I try to make
life my own show, when I try to direct the cast and determine how the credits
will roll. When I try to create a perfectly scripted extraordinary life, I am
always disappointed by the outcome.
Life is messy.
Life is unpredictable.
And to our disappointment, sometimes life feels
entirely commonplace and ordinary. The ordinary is dull, it is overwhelming at
times and sometimes causes us to hurt deeply.
But in the midst of the water, the tohu bohu, the
chaos we sometimes see as ordinary life, there is never the absence of the
ruach. Even when life causes us pain, when it feels unfair, or when it feels
like it is dragging us along the ground, there is never the absence of the
presence that hovers, that creates calm, that creates meaning out of mundane.
It means that in the tohu bohu of your morning commute
or your terrible boss or the same frustrating friend or news of illness that there
will always be the ruach that reminds us everything matters, nothing is
meaningless and we must pay attention to the presence of the wind. That we must
sit up straight, take orienting deep breaths in and out, remembering our
frailty and our absolute dependence on the Spirit of God when the water seems
to overpower us.
The breathing helps me remember that life is
precious, even when it feels repetitive or unreasonable or makes me want to
scream into a pillow. That no moment, ordinary or extraordinary, is absent of
the ruach that hovers over the tohu bohu. While it doesn’t give me the
director’s chair, it gives me peace.
Life is inevitably chaotic and uncertain and
repetitive. And yet, each breath is the extraordinary reminder that God hovers
like the wind, making life absolutely sacred. We breathe deeply and know that
our souls might be well and that each minute of life is extraordinary.
Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,
it is well.
It is well with my soul.
Meg