You've heard the expression that the Holy Spirit moves where the Holy Spirit wills. It was in a Mass reading this week (4/9/13).

Said Jesus to Nicodemus:

"The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, 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 3:7).

And so it is:

When we hear the Spirit -- when we feel Him, when we sense Him (when the breeze is blowing) -- we have to go with it. Simple. Go with it. Go with the flow.

It's when we have preconceived notions and attempt to control our own destinies (away from His Will) that things are difficult, that things do not flow, that gears don't mesh (but grind, clang, break). We inherit the wrong wind. There is a tornado (brute force).  "Nothing ever goes right for me!" some complain -- at the same time that they're the ones determining, godlike, their destinies.

Too often -- when the Spirit seeks to move us -- we only go kicking. We fail to realize that our assignments were "programmed" in the womb (when God "wove" us: Psalm 149:13).

That assignment is often what we love the most. Here is the "breeze." It's what the saints called "surrender."

God is the One Who designs and when He whispers, when he offers a blueprint, when he pushes a breeze, we should listen -- not to words as if to always predict the future but as a clue to let go and go with the flow and realize that when we do this He takes us to a higher better place.

The best that life can offer you can only be enjoyed if it is encompassed by that rustle, that "wind."

Key term: "better, higher place."

A higher plateau. From there you will better see. How often do you pray for "self-illumination" (by name)? For "clarity."

The wind of the Holy Spirit lifts us from the "valley of darkness." His breeze is a draft upward to a spot that is elevated.

That higher place was the right person to marry instead of the wrong one, the correct place to live instead of the one that you conceived, the career that flowed with your spirit instead of the one that flowed with the machinations of worldliness.

Forsake that!

We stymie ourselves when we ignore what He has planned for us or through pride and strongholds simply resist. We stymie ourselves when we don't adequately pray (extensively, with clarity of mind) before major turns in our lives. How often does God's Way differ from our own; yet, He and He alone has the big picture, and it is administered to our instinctual cognizance through the agency of saints, the Blessed Mother, and angels!

Mary herself once said, "where the wind is, I am."

When we're with the motion of the Lord, things are a "breeze." When there is too much force, on the contrary, and complication, it forms wind into a "twister" that scatters -- up for a moment but then cashing down. There is convolution.

There is worldliness.

Letting go means letting God and we stymie ourselves when we are unwilling to move with His wind because we are too rigid in our egos.

Forsake that.

When you are rigid you are like the levee that prevents nutrients in a river from flowing onto farmlands. Let His design work!

Living waters. Wind. Is there anything that better portends a season of growth? Is there anything more pleasant than a gentle spring breeze?

Is there not an indication in His breeze of temperate weather, softness of touch, and the needed fall of rain?

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