"You send forth your Spirit...."

In the last half of the nineteenth century, John Muir was our most intrepid and worshipful explorer of the Western extremities of our North American continent. For decades he tramped up and down through our God-created wonders, from the California Sierras to the Alaskan glaciers, observing, reporting, praising, and experiencing -- entering into whatever he found with childlike delight and mature reverence.

At one period during this time, in 1874, Muir visited a friend who had a cabin, snug in a valley of one of the tributaries of the Yuba River in the Sierra Mountains -- a place from which to venture into the wilderness and then return for a comforting cup of tea.

One December day a storm moved in from the Pacific -- a fierce storm that bent the junipers and pines, the fir trees as if they were so many blades of grass. It was for just such times this cabin had been built: cozy protection from the harsh elements. We easily imagine Muir and his host safe and secure in his tightly caulked cabin, a fire blazing against the cruel assault of the elements, wrapped in sheepskins, Muir meditatively rendering the wildness into his elegant prose. But our imaginations, not trained to cope with Muir, betray us. For Muir, instead of retreating into the coziness of the cabin, pulling the door tight, and throwing another stick of wood into the fire, strode out of the cabin into the storm, climbed a high ridge, picked a giant Douglas fir as the best perch for experiencing the kaleidoscope of color and sound, scent and motion, scrambled his way to the top, and rode out into the storm, lashed by the wind, holding on for dear life.

To me this episode is a metaphor of the Christian life both personal and as the Church. It is at the heart of Christian spirituality which is always and exclusively derived from God’s Holy Spirit. And “spirit” in the biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek, is the word “wind,” or “breath” -- an invisibility that has visible effects. This is the Wind/Spirit that created all the life we both see and can’t see; that created the life of Jesus; that created a church of worshipping men and woman; that creates each Christian. It is this Spirit that has created Christ Church. There is no accounting for life, any life, except by means of this Wind/Spirit:

“You send forth your Spirit, and they are created and so you renew the face of the earth.” Psalm 104: 31.

My hope and prayer for Christ Church as you enter the next phase of your common life and are lead by the Spirit/Wind of God, you will want to be out in the weather and not retreat to the cozy confines of the cabin! Breaking new ground is in the DNA of Christ Church and I hope it will continue!

In Christ, Jeffrey