Borne

There is a wind we cannot see

that whispers where it will,

and gusts toward eternity

‘gainst tethered hope until

resistance is enraptured—

torn from soil and sod,

caught up and gladly captured,

borne by the breath of God.

© Copyright 2007, TK, Patterns of Ink

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This weekend is the Annual Great Lakes Kite Festival at Grand Haven. Four years ago, my youngest daughter and I flew her kite there. Things were going great until the string broke and her 4-foot silken swallow landed about 20 yards out in the cold Lake Michigan waves.

I rolled up my blue jeans and waded out to get it. The 50-degree water ended up being waist deep—so much for the rolled-up pant legs—but we had a good laugh.

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The short poem Borne at the top of this post was born of thoughts about kites and specifically by the feeling I got as I watched the video at the end of this post. You must see it, but don't go there yet.

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Have you ever thought of the relationship between the words born and borne? We say a woman "bears" (carries) a child until it is born, but when the wind "bears" (carries) something, we say it is borne as in airborne. The first type of "born" requires the breath..of life; the second type of "borne" in a physical sense requires wind. In a spiritual sense, it requires the breath of God.

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There is a great old hymn entitled "Breathe on Me Breath of God." To hear the tune and read the lyrics go here. To hear it sung by Steve Green go here .

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I can't help but wonder if somehow the similar meanings of born and borne and breath of life and breath of God don't shed some light on the conversation between Jesus and a Pharisee named Nicodemus in perhaps the most quoted chapter of the Bible, John 3.

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Nicodemus is stumped by something Jesus told him. It's a statement many people who seek the truth still struggle with 2,000 years later: "...Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God."

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Nicodemus is puzzled. "How can a man enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born again?" Then Jesus explains there are two kinds of birth: the natural birth of the flesh he calls being born of water (as in when the mother's "water breaks"), but the second birth He says is spiritual: "...unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."

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Then in verse 8, Jesus speaks the words that prompted the lines of this short poem. "The wind blows (breathes) where it wills; and though you hear its sound, yet you neither know where it comes from nor where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

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The New Testament was originally written in Greek . Pneuma (πνευμα) is Greek for "breath", and it is the word pneuma that is translated as "wind" in verse 8 but also as "spirit" in verse 6 and at the end of verse 8. I'm no Greek scholar so please don't put too much stock in the following application. I mean well but could be wrong.

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I wonder if the "second birth" Jesus told Nicodemus about might mean both "born"—as in spiritual new birth—but also borne, in a more figurative sense, "borne" –as in caught up, carried, and delivered by the Spirit's will and not our own? Borne in the sense that a kite is caught up and dependent on the wind and thereby becomes less tethered to this earth while being more bound to the One controlling it. If so, it gives new meaning to an old folk song, because "the answer, my friend, [truly] is blowin' in the wind."

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If nothing else, my thinking out loud with you here provides a basis for the metaphor and meaning of the eight lines of Borne. It may also help if you consider the implications of will, tethered, resistance (likewise this related term), and enraptured.

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Now for the video that set these thoughts soaring in the first place. It's the most beautiful illustration of Borne I have ever seen. The man flying the three kites is Ray Bethell. Little did I know when I began this post that he resides in Vancouver, BC, home to some of my blogging friends.

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Watch the incredible Bethell video that inspired this post.

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[The video's gently floating score is "Flower Duet" from the Lakmé opera by Leo Delibes. It does in song what "Breathe on Me Breath of God" does in prayer.

See comment #20 from Ray Bethell.]

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