The Spirit bloweth

The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” John 3:8-10

I looked up the Greek word thelei, translated in the NRSV as "chooses". It's also translated as "wills", "wishes", "desires", and in my KJV, "listeth". So of course I had to look up "listeth," which I had always thought was to lean or tilt sideways. (Its archaic meaning is actually "wish" or "desire".) But my on-line Greek word study goes on. The sense of the word is "natural impulse", which is "more violent than a reasonable resolve... It is therefore used in cases where the wisdom and justice, etc, are not apparent..."

Whoa. This is a really different image of the spirit and nature of God. Even for today. The Aramaic word for Spirit is ruach, also breath, or wind. I hear this and think of the cool, floaty breeze I feel lying on a hammock with my pina colada. This Spirit is much more bracing. Not something I can tame or something that can be whatever I want. Jesus really captures the mystery, the mystifying practice of determining who or what God is, and what the &%*@ she wants from me. Accepting this, being willing to live in its sometimes chaotic windyness, is to be born of the spirit. My God is not a sadist, though, nor is the God of Jesus. This is the same person who calls God "Abba" - Papa or Daddy - and says God is crazy over li'l baby sparrows . I feel that.

And yet my experience of the Spirit can be one of chronic not-fairness, and "ya sure didn't ask me didja"ness. I immediately thought of this line by Carl Jung: To this day, God is the name by which I designate all things that cross my willful path, violently, recklessly, all things that upset my subjective views, plans and intentions, and change the course of my life for better or worse. And so why would you submit yourself to this? What's the difference between a life of complete self-will and a life of the spirit?

I asked my rabbi friend David this, and he said it's not like you get a nice thick manila envelope with collated instructions. More like, he says, he will be sitting counseling someone who has taken the trouble to seek him out and who sits down and chats about the weather. If he has plugged in to the spirit, he says, he will know something of what the person is really trying to say. At least he'll know that they're afraid to say what's really troubling them.

Jesus takes the man's flattering opening about his miracles, and somehow ferrets out what he really wants to know: Unless you are born again, you will not know the kingdom. Excuse me, Nicodemus thinks, did I even ask that? Either some of this conversation was left out, or Jesus knows what people are about to ask once they get around to it, so he figures he might as well just move things along - don't take all night. And he's blunt in this conversation, verging on testy. Why do you marvel? Why don't you know this? This sure isn't the Super-Nice! Jesus I was taught about in Lutheran Sunday School.

And the Spirit may not be Super-Nice! either. But it's real. And attuning to it makes a lot more sense than thinking I can outsmart it.