As I write this, the air is showing signs of ushering in a new season. Soon, it will be pollen season here in Atlanta, and our world will be veiled in a light-yellow dusting. You can feel it in your nose and mouth and eyes when you walk outside. This is the price we pay for living in the South—for the beautiful azaleas, dogwoods, magnolias, and other pleasures of new birth – of glorious spring weather – longer days, temperate climate, a feeling that nothing can go wrong when the world looks and feels so beautiful. And herein lies the tension that I/we hold. Air that is at once so heavy and so light. Air that makes us sniff, sneeze, and rub our eyes. Air that is so bursting with new life and new potential that we can hardly help but rejoice. The air holds it all – the good, the bad, the beautiful, the hideous, the heaviness and the lightness of being. Without air, we cannot exist. It is the fundamental source of us – and yet, it floats around and through us at times lifting us on high and at times crushing us.
“I believe in the Holy Spirit – the Lord, the giver of life.” I proclaim these words from one of the oldest creeds in my tradition. The word “spirit” -- it is translated from the Greek word “pneuma” which literally means “breath.” For me, this breath – this air – is the life force gifted to us by God and signifies the actual presence of God within. As author and scholar James David Audlin explains, “To inhale is to receive the gift of a living soul from God, and to exhale is to extol God with that Name that God breathes into us every time we take a breath.”1 So many faith traditions and cultures honor breath and the process of breathing, and lately, it has even been making a comeback in mainstream culture. In Sanskrit (aka your yoga classes), it is Prana. In Chinese (aka feng shui decorating), it is Chi. Buddhist teachers tell their disciples that “your breathing is your friend. Return to it in all your troubles and you will find comfort and guidance.”
Yet, we currently live in a time when we are warned to fear the air around us. For so many months, we quarantined and for longer still we filtered our air through masks to protect us from the air. Covid turned our world upside down, and unfiltered air still scares us. It is filled with particles that could kill us or our loved ones. The breath – the air – at once offering life and death. It is our friend and our enemy – or is it simply the foundation of our being….at once heavy and light? The air is an undeniable part of life just as are the contradictions and the tensions.
Writing and preaching have become deep calls for me. I have discovered through the years that through my story and my voice, God can speak universal truths. I write because I encounter God in the process. So often when I sit down to write for others, the words are slow to come. I stare at a blank page. I write and rewrite. I delete and retype. I close my laptop or my notebook in frustration, and I impatiently stew and worry, but when I least expect it, God comes to me, and a message begins to take shape. The finished piece, primarily and miraculously, is most often a message I need to hear. And when I confidently or timidly speak or publish the words to others, I am amazed at the connections and conversations they ignite. Now, I want to be clear that I do not consider myself to be a prophet. I do not believe that God speaks to me in a special way that allows me to write and preach. I simply believe that one of the gifts God has given to me includes expression of thought through language.
I want to use this platform as a space to share my musings. They are wide and varied – theology, social justice, educational equity, family life, and midlife womanhood. My hope is that my perspective might meet with your life in a way that is meaningful and together, we might find ways to live into the life that both weigh us down and propel us to unspeakable joy. I hope you will take this ride with me.
Thank you for sharing your writing. I look forward to reading them all.
Kate truly has a way with words like nobody that I have read. Thank you for sharing your gift with us, Kate!