Change Comes

I have been thinking a lot about transition both with the ending of my first year of seminary, moving to NJ and oh yea taking my first job at a church. This means that I am leaving my home church, and well this has left me conflicted. Both joyful and excited but then also sad and scared (thankfully not as terrified as I was for seminary), sometimes just one at a time and other times all together. I have been singing the first few lines from “She comes sailing on the wind” lately as it has been both an earworm to me and I think a way as to put some words to the way I have been feeling.


“She comes sailing on the wind,
her wings flashing in the sun;
on a journey just begun, she flies on.
And in the passage of her flight,
her song rings throughout the night,
full of laughter, full of light, she flies on.”

Now I know that this is about Sophia, AKA the Holy Spirit but I think that it also fits for me at this moment. I aspire to unfurl my wings and to light the world, full of joy and laughter. My song (I’m not much of a singer) well maybe not musical will hopefully proclaim the good news to the world and remind people that it is a story of love, not hate, not separation. But love.
Stepping out to give yourself the space to unfurl the wings takes a lot from many different areas of skill, and it takes courage. I hope that I allow myself to claim the space to do just that, to show, to tell, and to be love.
The other thing that I like about this song is that it gives us something tangible to link the Holy Spirit to, the wind. Being itinerant means that sometimes you are like the wind, moving this moment, but not the next. One does not always get to know where the wind blows but sometimes we get to know it is.

(my additional refrain to the lovely song)
Change comes sailing on the wind,
Not always knowing what’s to come,
On a journey, continuing on
With the passage of time,
A song of love fills the air
Full of joy, full of the unknown, change comes

Seeing the Wind

With to day being Pentecost and all and being done with my first year of seminary a month I have had a lot of time to think. This week I was at the New York Annual Conference of the UMC. Being a general conference year we voted on a lot of things. However for the first time I knew that I was able to provide answers to questions, I was the knowledgeable one. I'm not completely sure what happened between 2010 conference and 2011 that I became one with wisdom.


Yet this still makes me think about what someone said to me at the Drew lunch, 'don't rush seminary, because you will miss it when your gone'. Many people have said something along those lines to me but like the former dean said at the retirement of the academic dean 'don't be afraid of the next stage of life'. So maybe I have come to realize that I am a next stage of this adventure and have grown into what this stage entails.

You do not see the wind, but you know that its there. This is how it is with the Holy Spirit. You see the effects that it has on the world how it sweeps into places and pepple and clears the cobwebs away. Although the spirit can run amok sometimes its all for reasons we can't see but we know the effects. Maybe this is the reason why.