Chasing After Wind

Don't worry about looking flighty. It might be the move.

Anchor

"The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” - John 3:8

Sea

You’ve probably heard the phrase “chasing after wind” or “chasing windmills.” The former comes from the book of Ecclesiastes where Solomon uses it as a metaphor to describe stupidly and fruitlessly pursuing things, even good things, because nothing apart from faithful, joyful service to God has eternal value.

However, what happens with metaphors is that certain parts are reinterpreted and emphasized differently. Chasing after wind and windmills has also come to mean pursuing frivolous dreams, going after anything you can’t tangibly and concretely pin down.

When I look at my life, sometimes it feels like I’ve had a love affair with impermanence, and after 35 years, I have nothing to show for it. I feel like I’ve lived so many different lives: as an academic, a performer, a journalist, and now a preservationist. I had a global platform as a spoken word artist but didn’t leverage it to its maximum effect. I have a Ph.D. from Yale in Linguistics but never published any articles. I know a fair amount of roughly six living languages but am only fluent in one. My boyfriend lives in Rotterdam, my best friend in London, my mom in Virginia, and my house is in Atlanta, but somehow I live in rural Texas where I’m restoring a historic Black church?? There’s a lot of starts and stops and twists and turns. I’m not sure what any of it adds up to.

When I look at my friends who have settled down and gotten married, they seem so established. They've lived in the same place for more than a decade next to their closest friends, and they seem so PERMANENT, so stable. What the fuck am I doing? And more importantly, what do I have to show for it?

I’m chasing after wind.

But Jesus says something different in John about those who are born of the Spirit. They blow where they wish, and people may not be able to tell where Spirit-born people are coming from and where they are going. The metaphor of the wind is apt because both the Greek and Hebrew for ‘spirit’ (pneuma and ruach, respectively) are also the same word for ‘wind.’ There’s a power, newness, and vitality that isn’t constrained when we talk about the wind. The journey of those whom it guides isn’t predictable, but it is refreshing.

It might look frivolous to others, but could “chasing after the wind” sometimes be following the Spirit?

The day I submitted my dissertation, March 15, 2019, I was in a bit of a stupor. I lay on the guest bed in my friend Marilyn’s attic and said aloud, “My life makes no sense. It only makes sense if Jesus is holding it all together. He’s gotta be the reason behind it.” I think that’s what the life of the Spirit is, to have so many twists and turns that when you look back you can only say, “Well, must be God!”

No lie, most of the time I’m scratching my head. I’ve got questions, but I’ve also got awe. I have stories and testimonies and wild conclusions and revived beginnings and things that should not be but are. My life is littered with them.

So this newsletter is about following the unruly Holy Spirit, in thought, word, and deed, as She carries us according to the whims, purposes, and purrs of God.

The Father is the best storyteller. I want to know what delights Him about my life, and then I want the Holy Spirit to run with that plotline like a wind with a sail. And I hope you do, too, whether that looks like the life you expected or one that’s completely nuts.

Verily,

Alysia Nicole Harris

Sail

How I see her, twisting
her hands in the breeze, in the cool
breeze of the day, like she's 
braiding the locs of God.

Now I see him, bending
ear to the tree and the earth to listen
to the preach of small living things.
A smile emerging from their testimony. 

Wind wishing, soulful
hearing. Is everyone I was born with 
Spirit?

photo by Appolinary Kalashnikova. Unsplash.com