Day 8

From the Eucharistic Gospel reading for today, John 3:8: “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.”

This reference to the Spirit could easily have applied to the young woman riding her bicycle at top speed the wrong way up my street, except for one minor detail. I didn’t hear her. I didn’t hear her, and, almost before it was too late, she was upon me.

I am normally derided for having both feet firmly in the “Susie, the Safety Queen’’ camp, but tonight I was in a hurry. I looked to the right, that being the direction from which a car going the right way up the street would have come. Then, I stepped out, only to hear a voice exclaim and find a bicycle and its rider embracing my left. Too surprised to do more than gaze at her in consternation, I listened as she asked twice, “Are you okay?” I’m afraid my answer had little to do with my state of being and rather more to do with what she was doing going the wrong way up the street. She sped off.

I raced on to mass, arriving late and distracted. As my mind spun, I missed most of the import of the first reading, can recall little of the Psalm and only managed to focus on the point of the Gospel reading in its final phrases.

I’d be hard pressed to say that I’ve ever heard the sound of the Spirit, but I am aware, somewhat after the fact, that it has hit me, coming unbidden and without regard to the direction from which I would have expected it. Unlike the woman on the bike, it didn’t stop to ask, “Are you okay?” It had much better things to do than listen to a piece of my mind, chastising it for surprising me and putting me at risk. It, too, sped on, knowing I’d eventually get the point.