“A squirrel flies in,” said Dr. Meescham. “This I did not expect at all. It is what I love about life, that things happen which I do not expect. When I was a girl in Blundermeecen, we left the window open for this very reason, even in the winter. We did it because we believed something wonderful might make its way to us through the open window. Did wonderful things find us? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.”
Kate DiCamillo, Flora and Ulysses:The Illuminated Adventures

We have finally settled into a reasonable weather pattern and since Minnesotans love to talk about the weather, I will. These days represent the short, glorious period between the frigid cold and the time when air conditioning keeps us trapped in a suspended animation of heat. These are the days when windows can be open. All day. All night. The current of spring air turning toward summer is upon us. Heavenly.

This last week the windows in our house have been opened with abandon while we are home. And no time is that more wonderful than at night. While we may be inside doing normal, evening chores and entertainments…..reading, watching television, doing laundry, cleaning up dishes after supper…..the sounds, smells and experiences of the darkness waft into the walls of our house. We can hear the children playing, laughing, a ball bouncing, a Big Wheel gallumping over concrete. The planes landing at the airport, people home after a vacation or business trip. Or those taking off, adventure throbbing through veins of the travelers on board, all these sounds become part of our nightly activity. Cars go quietly or too fast down the street. Someone as far away as the next block is trying to get their lawn mowed before it is too dark to see the lines of before-and-after green. The ordinary lives that surround us, those that have been silenced by snow and cold and windows locked tight against it all, have once again become a part of ours.

This experience is only heightened during the hours when sleep is the work to be done. Just as I am dozing off, a dog begins an anxious bark. Does it sense a stranger or is that a joyous greeting to a master who has stayed away too long? A June bug flies against the screen sounding much bigger and weightier than is actually true. The light or heat or smell of humans attracts it in ways that may well lead to its demise. As sleep takes over, the cool breeze of the wee hours blows gently, pulling up childhood memories of summer nights of freedom, no school, no responsibilities.

Some time around 3:00 in the morning, the people who deliver the morning newspaper begin their way down our street. I can hear their muffler, loud and rusty, and the music they have chosen to be the soundtrack for their work. 70’s rock, loud, the bass beating out its driving rhythm. I wonder about them. Who they are? What makes up their lives? I hear conversation between two people and the sudden ‘thud’ of the news of the world hitting our front steps. With that finality, they make their way on down the street, stopping and starting, pausing, much like many of the stories we will read a few hours later.

These days at 4:30 a.m. the sounds of the night are given over to the music of those with wings. Sleeping or not, I am aware of their music, sweet songs that seem to coax the Sun up, up over the horizon. These tiny beings sing out and wait for their song to be answered someplace on the block over or in a tree down the street. Soon their songs either rock me back to sleep or urge me to get on with the day. Whichever it is, I am given to offering a prayer for the sheer joy of traveling the planet’s rotation with these singers, these harbingers of morning.

Windows. There are times when closing them is the act of keeping out the danger of cold, ice, snow, and frigid weather. Closing them also draws us into a safety net that is both real and imagined. Opening those same windows allows the Breath of Morning, newness, a cool, fresh breeze to be the balm of the night. Opening windows invites us into seeing the world with different eyes. The eyes of imagination, of our other senses, of the promise of a new day.

What windows are closed in your life these days? How might opening a window be the invitation to some new experience of Spirit that longs to lift you toward something just outside your imagination? This Sunday marks the celebration of Pentecost in the Christian household. We will read once again how the Holy Spirit came upon the people and nothing was ever the same again.

Flames danced. People spoke. Windows opened. A new day had arrived.