What's in Your Sails?

by Traci Hubbard

Where do bad rainbows go? To prism. It's a light sentence but it gives them time to reflect. Yesterday I popped into the grocery store to get peanut butter, and I noticed part of the label said, “May contain peanuts.” I thought, “Yep. This is why aliens are not visiting our planet.” Life can feel like rowing a boat upstream with a spoon.

Many of us are exhausted because we are trying to be LOVE entirely in our own strength. We’re sweating, straining, frustrated, and wondering why we aren’t moving forward. The Spirit never calls us to row alone. She calls us to sail in her breath. A sailboat moves not because of human effort alone, but because it catches the wind. In the same way, we move, have our being, with energy, peace, and purpose, when we catch the wind of the of the Spirit. Our questions on this Pentecost Sunday, are not, “How hard are you rowing, or how gifted or educated are you, or how young or old are you?” The question the Spirit is asking each one of us is, “What’s in your sails?” Have you ever been alone in a sailboat when the wind died? I have and I quickly learned a sail without wind goes nowhere.

In John’s gospel we hear Jesus saying, “Apart from me you can do nothing.”  Jesus didn’t say, “Apart from Me you can do a little, or you can struggle through, or you can fake it till you make it.” He said, “Nothing…apart from me you can do nothing.” A branch disconnected from the vine may still look alive for a little while, but eventually the leaves dry up. Many of us spiritually move through days like artificial flowers, beautiful from a distance, but we are not fragrant, growing, or evolving in our lives. The vibrant love and colorful energy of the Spirit is the life-flow of Mystery, or as Richard Rohr says, the consciousness of the universal Christ in us.

Have you ever had a day where it felt like you were trying to power your spiritual life on like Fred Flintstone, feet running fast, smoke coming out your ears, but no real Yabba Dabba Do because spiritually you have only moved three inches? I often feel the Spirit whispering, “Traci, stop trying to Flintstone your faith. Put up your sails and flow with the Spirit.” In sailing, the sail is useless without wind. We can have a beautiful boat, with polished wood, expensive ropes, and a perfect paint job, but without wind, we drift. Our community of faith possesses a lot of talent, but talent without the Spirit drifts. Ministry without the Spirit dries up, and without the Spirit, our programs and Sunday services become performances. A community of faith without the Spirit becomes routine. I am not called to be or lead routine. My personal and professional life require physical and spiritual disciplines, practices, but when I am connected to the breath of Love, nothing, not even washing my dishes becomes routine. Everything we do can become an act of gratitude, a time of connection and conversation with the Lover of our souls because the Spirit of MORE LOVE is sweet eternal wind in our lives.

A little boy was flying a kite on a cloudy day. The kite disappeared into the clouds, and a man walking by stopped and asked him, “Son, how do you know the kite is still up there if you can’t see it?” The boy replied, “Because I can still feel the tug.” Sometimes we cannot see the Spirit working in the present moment, but we can feel the tug of conviction that LOVE is with us. We can feel the tug of peace, direction, strength, joy in hardship, and restraint when we want to verbally kick someone through the goal post of life. Or maybe that last one is just something I experience. Those tugs we feel, our gut, our intuition, our hearts fluttering…that is the wind of the Spirit in our sails.

Through the words of the Apostle Paul, the Spirit reminds us we have been called to freedom, and not to indulge our egos, our shadows. Many think freedom means, “I can do whatever I want without guidance or boundaries because I know what is best.” Spiritual freedom means, “I now have the power to do what the Spirit desires which is always for the highest good of all.” When we stay stuck in doing things our own way, we sail without wisdom, love, and connection with ourselves, the Spirit, others, and creation. When we fill our sails with our own ways, our sails become heavy enough to pull us under before we recognize we need help. When we empty ourselves, we create space for the wind of the Spirit to fill our sails and take the helm in our lives. In other words, we become full of the Spirit.

Look at the contrast Paul provides – he compares the flesh, meaning our false self, our unhealthy ego, with the fruit of the Spirit. Our false self, which means our masked self, produces chaos, jealousy, anger, and division. The Spirit produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The fruit we bear, the words we say, the behavior we choose, is evidence of the kind of wind that is filling our sails.

Have you ever met someone who says I am grateful for all the Spirit does for me and with me during my day, and a moment later they are cussing to anyone who will listen in the church parking lot? Folks, that’s not the fruit of the Spirit. That’s the fruit of being stuck in a “Poor Me Victim” story on a constant loop. Refusal to consult the wise directions in our sailboat manual is like ripping up our sails, our connection to LOVE, and replacing them with a lightning rod in our sailboat, in our lives, and setting out into a choppy sea daring a storm to come to along.

Paul shares with his church in Colossae that being rooted in the Spirit is what holds us steady when the storms roll in and the Spirit is helping us navigate and the catch the wind we need to move through. He says, “Continue to live your lives with the mind of Jesus, rooted, evolving, growing in his ways.” (TPH paraphrase)

Friends we are sails. And when we intentionally listen and follow the ways of LOVE, we catch the wind, and our faith, our trust, our humility, holds the tree, holds our lives, steady as we go. The Spirit desires the movement of our sails to be for the highest good of all, so our intentions become roots for our stability. Without roots, every storm shakes us, every opinion moves us from the truth of who we are and sets us up for every disappointment to crush us. Folks, we become fools if we believe that the Spirit exists just to excite us emotionally or spiritually. The Spirit of Love, the Breath of Life, exists to establish us in meaningful connections and to root us so we are free to fly, to sail.

Everyone of us know that we cannot control the harsh and fierce winds that life and hurting people blow into our day, but we are always free to raise our sails. One of the most beautiful things about sailing is knowing we cannot create the wind. But we are free to position ourselves to receive it. We cannot manufacture restoration. We cannot force spiritual growth. We cannot fake the anointing of the Spirit or being enlightened. But we can have conversations with the Spirit, others, nature, and those who have gone before us. We can respect and care for all we have been given, including caring for our earth and our dirty dinner dishes. We are free to surrender, to abandon old ways of being, and ask for guidance as we commit to staying connected to the Vine. And when we are connected, we have all that we need, and all that is required to raise our sails, ready to trust the Divine will send the wind we need to get us from here to there and help us practice breathing with the wind of the Spirit.

An incredibly determined woman bought an old sailboat and took it out on the water for the first time. After hours of struggling, another sailor came by and shouted, “Your sails are tied down!” The woman had everything she needed to move, but the sails had not been released. Some of us are in a boat in our lives knowing the Holy loves us unconditionally, but we are tied down by fear, bitterness, pride, regret, shame, distraction, or unforgiveness. Folks, the strong sweet love of the Spirit is always blowing, but our sails must be open if we want to dive deeper into meaning and more in our journeys.

So, “What’s in your sails?” Are you drifting through life, or are you moving and having your being in the directing breath of the Spirit? This Pentecost Sunday, the Spirit is calling us to stop rowing in exhaustion, drifting aimlessly, because we are depending on our own strength. Wherever the Spirit blows, dead things come back to life, weary people rise, the direction we need becomes crystal clear and impossible journeys become possible. May it be so, amen.