The Blustering Element of Air

Mary Poppins Pops In

It’s 7 am and I’m sitting down to write with a hot cup of coffee, a chapped face, flickering lights, and soreness in my ears.

The thing about miraculous views in the open countryside is no one gives the disclaimer about how intense the pelting wind roars. Why wasn’t that on the real estate listing?

Today with storms bringing extra intense wind gusts, I’m reminded, once again, that there are forces that are beyond our control interacting with us, forces that can destroy us in an instant…a reminder of both the strength and fragileness of life.

Wind deities knock at the door as if to dare me to step outside to withstand the harsh beating of invisible whips.

Instead of a tornado calamity, the howling winds come in intervals, flipping tables and chairs as if an expression of angst to try to beat some sense into things and people of this realm.

Trees are pruned in an instant, limbs flying around like Pinocchio coming to life.

When I first moved into this old farmhouse, the wind blew down my fence, literally, the whole fence. Since then, I’ve had many shingles to repair and anything in the yard that doesn’t have some weight to it may or may not survive the ways of the wind.

As I sip my coffee and stare out the window, my front porch rocking chair goes airborne and lands in the grass. I realize my trash can flew over the road to the neighboring field.

The element of wind can wind things up, move energy in a new direction, or kiss the hands of time with a gentle breeze. Like every element it can be a destructive force of nature or a useful, positive one.

Right now it’s incredibly unnerving and destructive. I can’t repair or clean anything up while it’s happening, all I can do is watch and wait. As my grandma used to say, “these are the times to hunker down and wait it out.” Stormy winds ask us to sit in destruction, to watch things crumble, to observe…until the time comes to pick up the pieces and repair, or build something new.

The harshness of these winds purifies, cleanses, removes, and shifts the energy of everything in the house and upon this land. Nothing can be in this spot that is not strong. Nothing can survive here that is not willing to undergo the winds of change. Nothing will remain that is not with courage and fortitude to be a slate that is wiped clean. Nothing endures that turns away from the natural world and denies the elemental nature of our being.

And while we know there is a bombardment of manipulation and weather warfare, to hide out from the elements at “play” is to let the unnatural win instead of communing with the natural through these attacks for it is not just us affected, but the entirety of the natural world.

The Element of air asks us to trust in what we cannot see, it asks us to be guided by the Spirit that enlivens us, our energy…it asks us to connect with something deeper.

The unseen realm, the mystery, is the wisdom of the wind, the temptress of fate, the alchemical date with destiny, the dare to dance with the fear….fear of letting our old self be swept away, fear of letting go, fear of not really living.

In the movie, Mary Poppins, the wind blows away the nannies, for these are not the nannies meant to be on the scene…these are NPC’s (non-player characters) in a sense.

“When the east wind blows and the fog rolls in
out of nowhere like a ghost she appears again
sweeten medicine,
circus in the sky”

The air element in real life and the archetype of Mary Poppins is representative of the Spirit, of being led by God…of being in the flow.

Mary Poppins is a deity of the wind. She brings change and represents the alchemical process taking place in the family she is assisting. She’s the observer, guide, guru, helper…she sees from the birds-eye-view in the clouds. She travels by umbrella in the sky like an angel. Symbols of the representation of air, of Spirit, play throughout the movie in her connections with birds, storms, kites, umbrellas.

Mary Poppins shows us the power in the wind. Are you willing to be led by Spirit, by your Soul’s call? What are you expelling from your “breath / wind” …are you full of hot air…or blowing and bellowing in the direction of destruction…or are you breathing life into something?

The wind always sweeps things up. At my house it leaves leaves in a pile to which I can give them to my flock of poultry to enjoy as they search for “treasures.”

When the wind howls it asks us to, not only feel its presence, but to listen…it sings a wonderful and terrible song, it offers up insight into the direction of our lives…sometimes that’s a forceful push in a new direction, sometimes a gentle whisper.

As a libra who is very airy, mentally focused, the element of air challenges me to get out of my head, to scrub away the thoughts that try to make their way in as interference to the flow.

This day moves on…the Vultures are out playing, whisked away, allowing the wind to let them glide without having to do any work but embrace the direction it is taking them….but even on days like today, they retreat when the gusts become too much and sit in the trees waiting for the conditions to lessen in strength…we all watch from different vantage points the invisible’s effects on the visible.

And so this day I wait…
for the howling to soften into a song…
for the pelting to soften into dawn…
for the clearing to move along…
for the whirling danger to be gone…
and to remember, I am strong…
like the wind…
I can withstand the air that beats on my face like a drum…
I can wield the air that moves through my lungs...
I can let go what must go, let come what must come…
I can flow with the Spirit that sings into my eardrums…
I can face the winds of change even when it chaps my face…even when it rains…even when it’s hard to walk…even when it seems to last for days…
Even when it erases evidence of the life we’ve lived in and laughs at all of our plans…
Even when we’re asked to be the wailing wind of grief for a world caught in the gusts of a current that only stirs up dust.

I’m not the only one getting pelted by these winds today and one thing is for certain, the direction of life is changing. It’s up to each of us to look, not to the NEWS (north-east-west-south) on the screen, but out our own window, in our own lives, inside our own dream.

Stillness on days like today is not possible. The elements ask us to be present, to remember that we are forged by them…baptism by fire, by water, by air, by earth…we learn to walk The Way through the Wayward Winds.

When the wind tries to blow you down and knock out your sails, remember that you can swim…and float…and you can stand up, adjust your sails and continue onward.

• You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. — C. S. Lewis

• Let us not be surprised when we have to face difficulties. When the wind blows hard on a tree, the roots stretch and grow the stronger, Let it be so with us. Let us not be weaklings, yielding to every wind that blows, but strong in spirit to resist. — Amy Carmichael

• The wind shows us how close to the edge we are. — Joan Didion

When the wildness of the winds come, let them not worry you, but enliven the wildness within your own soul.

Some things need to blow down, blow over, blow away…sometimes it’s irrational, unfair, inconvenient, painful and frustrating…but we have to learn to accept the harshest days in the same way we do the gentlest ones…and it sucks the wind right out of you…and forces the fresh air in.

…from my window on this blusterous day…

Dorothy vibes (It really was no miracle, what happened was just this...the wind began to switch)
~ Angela

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