THE WIND JUST WANTS TO GO HOME [Sun, 9-16-18]

Christ In Winter: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

“Nature abhors a vacuum,” it is said, and so does our grand-dog, Ernie, whenever he has done something on the rug that requires the use of the vacuum. Or maybe those are different vacuums.

Nature doesn’t just abhor a vacuum. It abhors change. It wants stasis. Especially air. Air wants to stay right where it is. As Yosemite Sam might say, “That’s a fact, boy.” Wind is air’s way of trying to get back to where it belongs.

Rock & Roll songs are about leaving home and finding your place in the world. Country & Western songs are about trying to get back home after you found your place and it wasn’t all that great. Wind is just air’s way of trying to get back home, make air stable again. That’s why all the songs about wind are of the country-western genre.

Come to think of it, though, there aren’t many songs about air getting disillusioned about traveling all around trying to find some excitement and failing and so being ready to go back home, so…

Here comes the wind again, oh, yes, here comes the wind again, trying to get home, air wants no more to roam, oh, yes, here comes the blowing wind again… Can’t you just hear Willie Nelson singing that?

Of course, the air probably started moving with Rock and Roll songs, going out looking for fun… One, two, three o’clock, blow, ten, eleven, twelve o’clock blow, we’re gonna blow around the globe tonight, gonna blow around til broad daylight, gonna blow blow blow around the globe tonight. Ah, yes, Bill Halley’s Comet and “The Cyclones.”

Well, maybe the air doesn’t need a song after all. It has its own ways, according to Jesus. “The wind blows where it wishes. You hear the sound of it, but you can’t tell where it’s coming from or where it’s going.” Then he adds, “So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” [John 3:8]

John Robert McFarland