Adoption, Inhaler, and Mimi

I promised you an Ode to a Tree, about a red maple just outside my window that lights my heart every fall with her vibrant and fiery color.

I will get to that another day. Today I will risk sharing a spiritual exercise with you. Hank and I are facilitating an on-line course in Spiritual Formation. Each week participants read a brief lesson and choose an exercise to do that helps us experience the lesson. Last week I was to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to purify my heart and mind and then listen.

In a nutshell God seemed to be nudging me to reject “the path of least resistance” as my life’s guiding principle. I’ve begun to expect a new adventure in the Spirit. I wonder if God may propose some more challenging path of service for the next phase of my life.

In this week’s exercise I was to spend an hour in prayer, asking the Spirit to begin working in my life in a new and powerful way. Since I often listen to God with a pen in my hand, my listening took the form of a writing exercise I have used before. Some of you may recognize it from some old postings on my website where I selected random images from a list and challenged myself to a free-write.

When I began my hour of prayer for this week’s spiritual formation exercise, I was already a bit sleepy from reading the lesson. I drifted into a kind of half sleep state (which I no longer resist or obsess with guilt about) and noticed on rousing that a series of images had appeared to me in this semi-conscious dream state.

First I saw a quite literal vision of a trusting child, 7 or 8 months old, about to be handed from the arms of her biological father into the arms of her adoptive parents. I believe I was seeing it through the eyes of the child. Second, I also saw myself using an inhaler, like the kind asthma sufferers use. Third I saw my cousin Mimi smiling and laughing, just like she always does.

Three images: adoption, inhaler, and Mimi; Go!

Like a biological dad leaving his child in the care of adoptive parents, Jesus tells his followers he is leaving them. Someone called the Holy Spirit will take his place as his or her comforter and teacher. Jesus said there was so much more he wanted to tell them, but they were not yet ready to hear it. Like the image of the small child, the followers could not begin to understand the reason for their abandonment. This adoption was apparently for the child's own good. Jesus’ time was up. He could not stay with them indefinitely, so he made the supreme sacrifice and left them behind in the care of another.

It turns out, this Holy Spirit is the one who can stay with us forever, live inside us and guide us into the truth. Spirit comes from "pneuma," or breath. We breathe in this spirit, but sometimes, like Marie Osmond on Dancing with the Stars, we forget to breathe, and we fall down. Or for me, when a sleep study showed low oxygen saturation in my blood, I learned I have asthma. Now I use my inhaler twice a day to increase my capacity for breath. How much more should I seek those deep breaths of God’s Spirit that give me the strength and wisdom to live.

Ever since my cousin Mimi suffered a debilitating stroke, I have marveled at her determination and good humor. Paralysis on her right side has changed her mobility, and she’s had to work hard to regain her ability to speak. But she does move and speak and enjoy her life in spite of her physical limitations.


Physical limitations can be overcome with devices and therapies, inhalers and walkers. But forgetting to breathe-in the Spirit will inhibit our walk and our talk. It will paralyze our ability to live and love and serve.

My prayer: Lord, we have this treasure in vessels of clay. Your spirit comes to inhabit us, we breathe you in, you guide us. Just as life and purpose and joy radiate from Mimi every time I see her, may your Spirit—life, purpose and joy—radiate in me. I may use an inhaler for physical breath, but with your help, I can breath your spirit in, as long as I have breath.