Breathing in the Deep Wind

There are voices that echo beyond time, like the hush of wind through cedar trees, or the hush of spirit in solitude. One of those voices for me has always been Howard Thurman — chaplain, mystic, and a man who walked the worn, sacred path between suffering and hope.

 

Thurman, the first Black chaplain at Boston University, once wrote:

“We have externalized ourselves to such an extent that, more and more, the only real things that seem to be what we can touch, see, hear, taste, and smell. What has been forgotten is the fact that life moves at a deeper level than the objective and the data of our senses. We are most alive when we are brought face to face with the response of the deepest thing in us to the deepest thing in life.”

 

Read it again.

 

This isn’t just poetry. It’s a quiet map for living. It means that beneath the noise of our days, behind the scrolling and shouting and measuring and reacting, there’s another kind of aliveness. One we’re starving for.

 

Breathing in the Deep Wind

 

And so, I wonder: what wind is blowing through your soul this week?

 

Because most of us carry our questions silently, like stones in our pockets, we have aches we can’t name and longings we barely admit. Our spirits circle like birds over uncertain water, looking for a place to land.

 

Sometimes it’s sharp, like grief. Sometimes it’s soft, like waiting. Often, it’s just still. Like being on hold with Comcast, with no clear answer, only static.

 

And still, life moves.

 

This winter, we installed an anemometer outside—a wind gauge. It’s nothing fancy, but it tracks the quiet things: how fast the wind moved last night, how wild it got when we weren’t looking. Our yard, open to the sweep of Corey’s farm and the salty breath of the Puget Sound, turns into a wind tunnel. That little device measures what’s otherwise invisible.

 

And I wonder: can I? Can you?

 

Can we measure the spirit, the ache, the sacred breath that moves us?

 

Making room for wind and breath

The Apostle Paul thought so. He spoke of being “filled with the Spirit,” a phrase that, in Greek, is intimately connected to wind and breath. Not something we summon by striving. But something we make room for—something that comes alongside us, as close and unseen as the air in our lungs.

 

In Ephesians 5, Paul names three ordinary, radical things to do if we want to catch that Spirit-wind:

 

1. Practice Wisdom.
   “Be careful how you live, not as unwise people, but as wise.”
   
   This isn’t academic wisdom—it’s earned, storm-tested wisdom. The kind that comes from sailing rough seas and living to tell about it. Wisdom that says: don’t drift. Don’t let culture or your fears or your habits drag you along. Set your course. Create rhythms that pull you toward truth because the days are contested. Evil doesn’t always roar; sometimes it just distracts. Don’t give it a foothold in your soul.
2. Align Your Priorities.
   “Understand what the will of God is.”
   
   Not just what feels good. Not just what fits your calendar. The will of God has a shape: for Israel, it was care for widows, orphans, and strangers. For Jesus, it was love for the outcast and the forgotten. If your priorities don’t bump up against the margins, they may need reordering.
3. Sing.
   Not just in your car. Not just in your head. But among one another—in joy, in gratitude, in trembling hope. Worship that fills the room and the cracks in your spirit. That kind of singing clears space inside for breath. For Spirit.

 

Breath-sized moments

Paul’s lists are practical. Unromantic. Earthy. Not a checklist for sainthood, but a rhythm for staying human:

• Tell the truth.
• Keep anger in check.
• Work hard and live honestly.
• Build others up.
• Offer grace, not judgment.
• Choose kindness over bitterness.
• Forgive.

And unlike what I was taught, Paul never says the worst sins are sexual or bodily. No, he draws his hardest lines around things that tear communities apart: lies, resentment, greed, wrath.

 

So maybe the Spirit comes in small choices. In breath-sized moments. In the silence, when you walk alone and remember that something deep in you is responding to something deep in life. And in that moment, you are most alive.

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Keith Anderson, D.Min., is a Faculty Associate for Spirituality and Vocation at VantagePoint3 and President Emeritus of Seattle School of Theology and Psychology and is the author of several books, including Reading Your Life’s Story (IVP, 2016), A Spirituality of Listening (IVP, 2016), and Spiritual Mentoring (IVP, 1999). Keith’s newest book, On Holy Ground: Your Story of Identity, Belonging and Sacred Purpose, will soon be released from Wipf & Stock Publishers. In his writing, teaching, and mentoring, Keith seeks to set a table for people looking to enter the “amazing inner sanctuary of the soul” in the most ordinary and extraordinary moments of life.