Wind and Waves

“Don’t let the choppy water scare you,” said the skipper, “it just means there’s wind.” I knew he was right, but still something within me wanted the wind without the waves. It was a dramatic day on the bay, one in which we got soaked and almost flipped, but it was also exhilarating.

This memory resurfaced recently after a particularly troublesome day. I found myself on the shore of a potential creative project and saw countless waves bobbing up and down and creating an occasional whitecap. When I focused on the waves, I recoiled, but when I remembered the waves were the result of wind I walked toward the boat.

In biblical times, people felt God made himself known through wind. The fancy word in Hebrew is ruach, which means mighty wind. They felt God came and surrounded us like a breeze, and after Pentecost the early church felt God came and blew through our lives like a Holy Spirit daily.

The problem is, with wind comes waves.

Just ask the artist that feels inspired to write a memoir, an alcoholic who feels led to put down the drink, a child who sets sail into a life independent of her overbearing parents, a woman who leaves her unhealthy marriage, or man who changes his safe career of 18 years. In each case, there’s a mighty wind promising a new destination, even if it lies beyond the horizon. As exciting as such a journey might seem from the shore, the wind that carries also creates waves. We will likely get soaked and almost flip. No wonder so few set sail.

If we focus on the waves, we’ll either stay on shore or search for harbors where the wind doesn’t blow. (Such harbors come in all shapes and sizes, and, if we’re honest, we know which ones we return to regularly) But if we celebrate the wind, because we know its source and its purpose, we can learn to open our sails and allow it to carry us across the water to the place God always wanted for us.

Following

The waves were big, but the current swift. As much as I wanted to reach and ride the waves like the others, it was too much for my 12-year-old legs. My cousin, however, was older and bigger. He ran through the water with ease and dipped his shoulder to carve his way through the waves. “Get behind me,” he said with an encouraging wave, the kind a younger child lives for, and I did. No longer did I struggle. He carved a path through the current and opened a passage through the waves. Soon I was out with the others waiting for a wave to ride.

I had forgotten this moment until this morning. In my set-apart time downstairs, I thought about the fact that today’s my sobriety date. Looking back, I remember how hard this journey was when I began, how the waves were mighty and current swift, but like the day on the Jersey shore years ago, there were others who had been in the water longer than I who invited me to walk behind them. They carved a path and opened passages for me that made it possible for me to make my way out to the waves.

The image also speaks to my life of faith. Like sobriety, living a life of faith is not easy (despite what some people say). It is the life I long for, but the world’s current and my own weak legs often cause me to struggle. Fortunately, I have been “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses,” which is a fancy way to say I have been given strong men and women of faith, people who were (and are) strong enough to carve paths through the current and open the waves. Through the years, when they saw me struggling they invited me to get behind them. Because of them I was able to make it out with the others. For such people, I am forever grateful.

Finding the artist's way

“If you've never stared off into the distance, then your life is a shame.”  Counting Crows

Forty years ago, I pulled a book down from a friend’s shelf. The title, The Artist’s Way, stirred that part of me that longed to be an artist. I was a chaplain at a school in England and knew the spring within me was drying up. It turned out the book would change my life forever.

The memory is far from me now, but it came for a visit when I bought another copy and committed to working through its twelve-week creativity course. “But you’re already creative,” I could hear people say, but creativity, like spirituality, is a life-long journey. The book hasn’t changed in forty years, but I have. I’m sure this journey will be unlike any other.

I share this to invite you to consider trying something you’ve done before. Maybe you read a book you loved in college, climb a familiar trail, or try a sport you used to love. Whatever you choose, the important thing is to experience something as if for the first time. Yes, you might remember what you loved long ago, but you also may notice changes within you since your last encounter.

“Every child is an artist,” Picasso once said. “The problem is how to remain an artist once he (she) grows up.” Ted Lasso would remind us to be curious. I would say, always feed your sense of wonder. However you describe it, 2024 offers us the chance to try old things in new ways, to stare off in the distance and dream outlandish dreams, to be the child you’ve always been.

Who knows what you’ll find, but I’m pretty sure you’ll have fun along the way.