Openings

 Last week we headed up to the North Shore of Lake Superior for a one part of my sabbatical.  Most specifically, our destination was my friend Anna's retreat, called, "The Spent Dandelion", a place she created to offer respite and reflection time to clergy (and others, I suspect; we all need respite and reflection).  Her place is right on the border of Two Harbors, Minnesota, in the forest and close to the greatest Great Lake.  Besides reflection and respite, one of the virtues of Two Harbors in the summer is a break from the summer heat.  It rarely gets above 75 degrees Fahrenheit and almost no one has air conditioning.

When we drove in Sunday afternoon, Anna was standing in the driveway, waving her arms and pointing us to our designated parking space.  Her husband and their four dogs were also there to welcome us (their cat, not so welcoming).

Almost the first thing Anna did was apologize, though.  It was not 75 degrees.  It was unusually warm for the area that week, and was around 90 as we spoke.  In fact, we had been commenting as we drove north, that we were expecting it to cool down any minute, and it didn't.  Like everyone else, they didn't have air conditioning, but all the windows were open and the fans were going, and they were expecting some "weather" that would cool things off.

Living just north of Houston as we do right now, we are used to hot weather, but also to air conditioning.  So it was a slight disappointment, I'll admit, to go to bed hot, with the fans on and the windows open on both sides of the apartment.  Only the dog didn't mind.  She delighted in looking out the window, and curled up on the bed to sleep.

But during the night, something magical happened.  Indeed, it was just as my host promised.  Some kind of weather came in (although not a huge storm), and the breezes coming through our open window were cool and refreshing.

I remembered this experience from childhood, although I had not felt it for a long time.  In our house growing up, there was no air conditioning, and I remember the windows open at night, box fans in the windows, sleeping with just a sheet on those steamy night.  Then, sometime in the night, the wind would turn, and the air coming in would  be cool and refreshing.

These days it seems like we keep the windows closed most of the time; in the winter, to keep it warm, and in the summer to keep it cool.  I didn't realize how much I  miss the feeling of air coming through open windows.  I didn't realize how much I needed cross-ventilation.

We keep the windows closed for many reasons -- excessive heat and cold, certain noises, the highway is too close, we are distracted by the neighbors, their music and their conversations.  (I remember hearing through the wall a very loud telephone conversation in the middle of the night in my first apartment.)  But I forgot how much we need fresh air, not just cross-ventilation, but cross-fertilization, to be stirred up by the breeze or the music or conversations that float through the air (well, some of them anyway).  I forgot how much I needed fresh air, open windows, open eyes, and ears.  

The open windows reminded me of something else too:  they reminded me of a childhood enchanted with God's presence, in the mysteries of the world, of nature, of all the things I was thirsty to know, and didn't yet.  They reminded me of the stories of scriptures, and the stories in fairy tales, and the stories from the books that I was starting to learn to read.  When did I close the window and learn to live in artificially comfortable temperatures almost all the time?  

I am thinking about this.

I just completed a course on spiritual direction.  Theoretically, I can go and be a spiritual director now.  I am still learning what that means, though.  I am by no means an expert.  I need spiritual direction myself, someone to remind me that the Spirit is out there, and in me, and to open the windows that are closed in me and catch the breeze.  I need someone to remind me to be open to the enchantment that is already in the world.

I think, in its most basic form, this is what spiritual direction is.  It is to remind each other to open the windows in our lives, open the windows to the voice of God in scripture, to open the windows that point to God's presence in tears and shouts, in maple leaves in fall, in red-tailed hawks circling, in the wind.