Bone-dry and Blooming

the sacred reciprocity of wind, wombs, and dogs named Walter

Mar 25, 2024

Welcome to the Back of the Flock, where we are slowed down by hunting for the baby’s last pacifier, searching for the winter gear due to a freak spring snow storm, and scouring the house for the myriad of cups left in every room except the one with a dishwasher.

Whatever’s slowing you down, I’m glad you’re here!

This week’s essay has been brewing in me since last fall. I very much believe that nature shows us what God is like, and today we’re getting a lesson from the weather, a dog named Walter, and from our very own wombs.

You can press play below to listen here, or scroll down to read on.

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The kids were getting a little squirmy, but I sat spellbound.

In a plain conference room at our local branch of the National Weather Service last fall, a meteorologist was talking our field trip group through the science of weather prediction, the pathways of the wind, and graph after beautiful graph of comparative information.

I was just beginning to wonder if I’d missed my calling as a meteorologist when our guide told us that the main thing that drives the weather is that the earth wants balance — cold air pushes into hot spaces, warm winds wind their way into freezing locations, cyclically driving the weather patterns we’re all familiar with. My hand immediately shot into the air, muscle memory from decades past; I had to stop myself from maniacally waving my arm around until I was called on — “But why? Why does this happen?”

Consider, he said, what it’s like to hold an ice cube in your hand. Your hand feels cold, but at the same time, the ice cube melts. There’s an exchange that happens. We find this kind of give-and-take, this balance, all over nature. It’s just…how the earth works.

Months later, I was sitting in my favorite spot at the coffee shop where I write every Friday. I had beelined for the back table like I was Monica Geller at Central Perk, always a little miffed when someone else would beat me to it. It is a small table, surrounded by plants, far from the cash register and the main door that blasts the space with icy air each time a new customer enters. The coffee and words were flowing when an older couple came in with their dog. The man and the dog sat down on a bench near me while the woman ordered, and what can only be described as light chaos ensued.

The dog was…not well behaved.

He audibly whined with longing to be pet by each person who walked by. “Sit, Walter, siiiiiiit!” the man kept pleading. But Walter was far too excited to sit. Instead, he turned in energetic circles while tippy-tappying his nails on the hardwood floor, and he nearly knocked over a potted plant with his enthusiastic tail-wagging. The man stroked Walter’s head tenderly even as he said aloud to all of us in the vicinity, “Our apologies! He’s such a little devil!” We all laughed.

I watched the trio as Walter nearly tripped the woman as she brought back their order to the bench. Walter began haphazardly sitting, lying down, then standing up, and spinning in a fervent attempt to be given some of their scones. The man laughed, “Walter, Walter, calm down, Love. Just sit, you little stinker, sit.”

Finally, Walter became still.
And this moment followed.

Moments later, Walter did, indeed, sit, and they happily fed him bits and pieces from each of their respective scones. I tried not to listen to their conversation, but I was rapt as they chatted with another person who stopped to scratch Walter behind the ears: He’s a rescue. He pulled me off my feet chasing a squirrel the other day. He’s such a snuggler. We’ve tried dog training classes. He just loves people so much.

A naughty dog, the work of rescue, the scraped knees from the sidewalk squirrel incident.
The snuggles. The enthusiasm. The love.

Give and take. Take and give.

Look at any pregnant woman, and you will see a woman who is giving. Look at her! See how she sprints to the nearest trashcan to relinquish her breakfast in the early days. Watch her amidst her eight-five pillows as she tries to get to sleep. Observe how she waddles in the last weeks, her pelvic floor a relic of her past life. Give, give, give.

But do you know about maternal microchimerism? How during pregnancy, there is an exchange of cells between mother and baby — across the placenta, fetal cells travel into the mother’s bloodstream and vice versa. Have you heard about how this exchange last far beyond the end of a pregnancy — decades even? Studies have shown that maternal cells actively travel to their children’s troubled organs to facilitate healing, and fetal cells have been found on injured maternal organs, even on C-Section scars, to contribute the necessary collagen for healing.

Give and take.
Balance.

It’s just…how the earth works, the meteorologist had said.

I get goosebumps as the ice cube melts; the wind stings my face as I walk with the dog, headed north back home from the creek, and I know the earth is trying to find its balance after tripping over a string of unseasonably warm days. The invisible God is made visible as bare branches wildly sway against a blue sky. Walter’s puppy eyes declare the glory of God — scones and forgiveness, dog hair and snuggles on the couch (the cure for loneliness). Even within our own cells, there is built-in balance, Glory Hallelujah!

Back and forth, give and take, this sacred reciprocity is literally wired into us and is witnessed in the air all around us, all of it — the wind and Walter, the first tulips and the first person pulled from the rubble, the clouds pregnant with rain and the mother heavy with child — all of us, reflecting the image of the God who wove balance into our bones.

Mary knew this moments after the angel delivered his news and vanished, an exhale expelling her held breath from her body before she sang out about how the proud would be scattered like chaff, thrown from their thrones, while the lowly and hungry would finally be richly fed. She sang of emptiness filled, of rights made wrong, of balanced scales, honest at last.1

She knew this in the backroom of a wedding, when she assured her son, It’s time, it’s time, show them who you are. And there, we find Jesus, turning the brittle stone jars used for ritual purification into the exclamation point on a feast, ushering in freedom where there was once rigidity with each pour of the rich, red wine. We see it in the refugee turned king, in a chariot exchanged for a dusty Jerusalem donkey. The God who holds the balance of the universe spreads a blanket over the lion and lamb for their afternoon nap together. This is the God who promises that the desert will flow with streams, that the dry bones will dance, that the lost coin will be found and rejoiced over.2

Cold and hot.
Lost and found.
Give and take.
Dead and alive.
Empty and filled.
Bone-dry and blooming.

The truth of it has been spun into our cells, and the Spirit calls to us in the wind: The scales will one day be balanced.

Bonus Round:

If these ideas around balance and reciprocity interest you, check out Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard.

And over on Instagram, you’ll find…