The Prayer Thread is a collection of teachings and practical prompts to help as we learn to pray in community. This text was originally delivered on November 30, 2025 as a short teaching at our online weekly prayer sit.
As a youth, I ran long distances. Often, especially in competition, when the wind blew up, much like running uphill, it made the race more difficult. Many runners would get psyched out by the wind and fall behind the pack. By contrast, the gusts, or even the gentle breezes, passing over my flesh, felt to me like an invitation. From somewhere, “more,” though I couldn’t see the messenger, issued an invitation: to face the challenge of working harder and surge forward more fully, into the power of the strength of my legs and the potency of my lungs. We can’t see the wind, but we know it exists by the impact of its activity. Youthful runner taps potential. A prayer on the wind.
Nearly a decade later, immersed in theological studies and having lost my clear sense of the Holy One through the process of splitting wide-open my worldviews, the wind addressed me again. This time, lifting up the corner of the blanket that I was sitting on as I read about God. It issued another invitation: know, yet also be known. Names for God may come and go, but Presence persists. insisting on addressing me once again, not directly, but through the impact of the activity of the wind. Aspiring theologian remembers God. A prayer on the wind.
As the wind whips across the Midwestern plains of Minnesota, the first snowstorm of the year announcing itself with gusts of snow sputtering across the land, I notice the powerful impact of whiteouts (or brownouts or blackouts, depending on your landscape). Another invitation from the wind: to surrender into unknowing and unleash the power of spiritual freedom. Seeker loses her way and finds it again. Another prayer on the wind.
Even if we, and our prayers, are just “dust in the wind,” as a well-known American song goes, our prayers are still a mighty manifestation of the Life of the Holy One, for no one sees the wind, yet we believe that it exists because of the impact of its activity, and in the case of the Holy One, because of the power of its Presence.
May we learn to toss our prayers up and out onto the wind, addressing and being addressed by forces unseen yet so very Real.
