Poetry Theology

Wind (and God)

“A Rapid — Footless Guest — / To Offer Whom a Chair / Were as Impossible as Hand / A Sofa to the Air —”

Duo Dickinson / 2.25.21

The Wind — tapped like a tired Man —
And like a Host — “Come in”
I boldly answered — entered then
My Residence within

I awoke to predawn wind, in no way but noise. There is no sound like it. At night it is only shown in our home’s diversion of its way. The home has only translated the wind when it is intense and from the right direction. As I typed this the front door popped open, sucked off its repose — I had not latched it. Like the trees, only other things reveal the wind. Emily Dickinson’s poem continues:

A Rapid — footless Guest —
To offer whom a Chair
Were as impossible as hand
A Sofa to the Air —

Wind begins and ends, but it has no origin or destination. It is life itself without sentience — aimless beyond direction, no point, no inspiration. Like the sea it is local in force and measureless in extent. We know it will stop, but we are surprised at the silence when it does. It is, in these ways, like our Year of Lent.

No Bone had He to bind Him —
His Speech was like the Push
Of numerous Humming Birds at once
From a superior Bush —

Action with life is a reality for those who are alive. When existence is primal, and definitely not discretionary, survival trumps understanding. My father once tried to tell me about water, that when we used it, it did not go away — like a death — just a bit of its enormity did what we wanted it to. And then the water was excused to rejoin the rest and become rain, a pond, the ocean. I did not get it then. Like the wind.

His Countenance — a Billow —
His Fingers, as He passed
Let go a music — as of tunes
Blown tremulous in Glass —

In that dark of night, the sound of wind resonates through what is in its way, a way that we are completely ignorant of beyond the howling sound. This is, for me, the Divine truth of what we cannot know. We are in the path of a wind that is everywhere, silent, until it touches us, and when it touches us it is undeniable, invisible, but as real as rain, or heat.

He visited — still flitting —
Then like a timid Man
Again, He tapped — ’twas flurriedly —
And I became alone —

I am ever alone with God. In work, in play, in love and friendship, God is in the background, and is only loudly there when the noise and the action abates. God is seen, and yet unseen. He is heard, and yet makes no sound. He blows where he wills. This Year of Lent has been a full-on distraction, to the point of obsession. But the world hits you, like the wind, hardest when you are alone. When this Year ends, and it will, God and the wind will still be there. Because they never left.