Tag Archives: Holy Spirit

The Green Spirit

15 Sunday May 2016

Posted by in blessing, creation, earth, gratitude, Mystery, reflection, refreshment, renewal, Spirit

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images-4And so Pentecost comes! Traditionally the liturgical colors are red with yellow, reflecting the fire that alighted on the heads of the faithful in Act’s story of that event, signifying the illumination and power of the Holy Spirit. But Maren Tirabassi, contemporary liturgist and prophet, has called our attention to the fact that in some circumstances, this year, for instance, flame and wind are not positive and encouraging symbols; in the case of the horrendous fire in Alberta, Canada, and in other places around our planet, fire is only a force for destruction and devastation. So she in her winsome and provocative blog, Gifts In Open Hands, has lifted up other metaphors for the Holy Spirit. Her musings immediately pointed me to that earlier medieval liturgist and prophet, Hildegard of Bingen.

From one of her visions Hidegard sees God declare:

I am the breeze that nurtures all things green…I am the rain coming from the dew that causes the grass to laugh with joy of life…I am the yearning for the good.

It is the greenness of the Spirit I am longing for this year. Dr. Rebecca Button Prichard in her book Sensing the Spirit (Chalice Press, 1999), says:

The Spirit of greenness is visible in a way that transcends metaphor, analogy and imagery. The Creativity that causes leaves to unfold and buds to flower is the Creator Spirit, the One who broods over creation still. (50)

So many people and places in life I encounter need the greening from the Spirit inside to bring life back, to bring healing throughout, to spring back into fruitful encounter with the Holy and the world. And I feel the need of it in places in me. I often pray that poetic voice of T.S. Eliot, “Oh, thou Lord of Life, send my roots rain!”

I am looking at new plantings of a more drought resistant grass in the small patch of lawn in my back yard. They are bright green as they take root, and they need much less water than our previous sward. They remind me of places where I would invite the Spirit to bring her nurture into greenness–my energy for coming alongside others, my patience for sitting still and listening as the Holy One speaks, my perseverance in doing those things that will bring good for others, now and in the future, my openness to hearing, seeing and sensing what is new. I would love my life of prayer to become jade green, shining and gem-like in its consistency and beauty. I would like to wander down forest green paths of Mystery that I have not yet discovered. I pray that my encounters with those I meet be bright kelly green, sparking with mutual compassion and  appreciation. The colors of all life will be brightened with a fresh infusion of the greening of the Spirit.

After this Eastertide past with equal shares of Light and Darkness in our world, I find myself needing to sing this hymn for Easter and beyond:

Now the green blade rises from the buried grain, wheat that in the dark  earth many days has lain; love lives again, that with the dead has been: love is come again like wheat arising green.

When our hearts are wintry, grieving or in pain, your touch can call us back to life again; fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been: love is come again like wheat arising green. (John M.C. Crum, 1928)

Come, Holy Spirit, green my heart!

Image created by Marcy Hall for Abbey of the Arts

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Lent 5: A Time of Silence

16 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by in Lent, listening, Mindfulness, silence, Uncategorized

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After all the words read and said in my Lenten practices this year, Joyce Rupp invites me to observe a time of silence and solitude each day. What does the silence bring me?

  • a slowing down of my breathing
  • a clearing of my space of external noise, a choice for me to unplug and shut down what creates babble
  • a lens through which to notice the gifts of creation around me–the first rose in bloom, the sprout from the succulent in the box by the gazebo, the hummingbird and the pair of romping squirrels, the endless forming and re-forming of clouds
  • an inner word to anchor my reflection; today, once again, it was GRACE
  • a space in which to spread and to sort all the pieces of my daily life, my memories of past adventures and hopes for the unknown and unfolding future
  • an ear by which to listen to what comes to me from the Spirit–for today, for those closest to me, for creation, for all people everywhere
  • a tangible connection to all others who long for and seek the Holy in all places around the world
  • a context for understanding and hoping in prayer for the broken world that God loves and that I try to love
  • one more encounter with the Mystery we call God, ephemeral, real, numinous, in that slowed down breathing, closer than my own breath.

Thomas Keating says, The root of prayer is interior silence.

I pray in this final week of Lent that what I choose for my exterior practice becomes a reality in my interior heart.

 

Advent II: Love, the Bird

06 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by in action, children, compassion, paying attention, waiting

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Birds, though you long have ceased to build, guard the nest that must be filled. Even the hour when wings are frozen God for fledgling time has chosen. People, look east and sing today: Love, the Bird, is on the way.  (Eleanor Farjeon)

As I look eastward out my window in the morning, I have a host of birds that entertain and intrigue me–mockingbirds, wrens, crows, the busy hummingbird quite in love with the fig tree next door, who drops in often, and if the wind is right, seagulls come screeching through. One morning we were even visited by an adolescent hawk, resting mid-flight on her way to somewhere. But even in our temperate climate, there seem to be fewer birds aloft than in spring and summer months.

According to the carol, the Advent task is guarding the nest that must be filled. This week my heart longs to know how to guard and protect the nests for the little ones in our world who are at risk. We are closely connected to our neighbors in the east in the towns of San Bernardino and Redlands. Beyond the colleagues who were slaughtered last week, I am in grief for the children whose nests have been permanently upended because of  that day–the 6 month old child of the shooters, the little ones who were left without a parent after the shooting, the learners who endured hours of lock down while the sorting out process continues, the neighborhood gaggles of young people who now have been close up and personal to the effects of terror. How am I called to be a protector of nests and the ones who inhabit them?

I am reminded again and again how in both testaments of the Bible, there is a call to protect, to care for, to be advocates for the widows and children. A friend here is part of an interfaith coalition of people who are are becoming advocates for undocumented immigrant children shipped in from the border, awaiting in warehouses for the judicial process to grind its wheels. And I support with energy the many gatherings of faithful ones who labor at feeding the hungry children, housing the homeless ones and providing for the well being of so many vulnerable ones. In the movie “Mary Poppins” the most poignant plaint is from the Bird Woman on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, singing “Feed the birds, tuppence a bag.” How am I to feed the birds this Advent?

 The promise is that Love, the Bird is on the way this Advent. In a very provocative book, Consider the Birds, pastor Debbie Blue writes about the appearances and meanings of birds in the Bible. Some are metaphors, some are illustrations, some are even names for the Holy One. When I am praying for Love, the Bird, to come quickly, I have in mind one not named in Scripture, but one from the Celtic tradition, who is the symbol for the Iona Community, the Wild Goose. I am told by members of that community that she was chosen as a symbol of the Holy Spirit; they were drawn to her because the wild goose is known for going where it will, like the Holy Spirit, and sometime it makes what seems to us to be a great mess. Certainly I don’t know how and when the Spirit is coming among us, but I believe she will, and I feel sure that in guarding the nests of the little ones, some neat and tidy ways of societal organization might be left in a mess.

Even so the Spirit and the Church cry out: Come, Lord Jesus!

The whole creation pleads: Come, Lord Jesus!

And meanwhile, I am paying attention to the places where I can guard the nests that need filling and care and feed the little birds that are here in this world.

Freed to be Free

04 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by in Discernment, freedom, Spirit

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Freedomstatue I recently found the first sermon I ever preached to a congregation, over 30 years ago. It was called “Freed to be Free,” based on Galatians 5, and I preached it on a summer Sunday when all the regular church staff was away. I was in seminary, had had no preaching classes, just trying to imitate what I had always heard from the pulpit. I am not sure why I was preaching on that text, because I didn’t know much about the lectionary at that stage of my learning. But as I re-read it, I could see clearly that the call to freedom in my spiritual journey was compelling and urgent for me. And the call to a journey of freedom in the Spirit still compels and invites me.

I began to wonder how I have lived into the FREEDOM that is called me so deeply when I first preached on it. I see how careful I was, coming from whence I came, being sure not to allow for uncontrolled license, or to confuse FREEDOM with “doing what comes naturally.” I felt is necessary to speak a cautionary word about anger and self-centeredness, but I was not able to anticipate the ways in which I would become free on my journey of Spirit.

This past month, I have found myself unable to write anything. And maybe that was the FREEDOM I needed–no self-imposed deadlines, no internal pressure to find meaning or something meaningful, no meeting my own carefully crafted intentions. Maybe I needed to listen to the Word that came to me when I was on retreat, which was to “Just stop!” I am at a delicious location in life, where in most ways, I can do just that–stop, let it all go for awhile. And so I have. This July I have completed no projects, no ambitions, not even many lists of to-dos.

But I have been and still am  continually musing on how, when and where I am living in the freedom for which Christ made me free:

  • I am free to remember and marinate in, maybe even to trust, that there is nothing that can separate me from the Love of God.
  • I am free to love and appreciate my person that God created–body, mind and spirit.
  • I am free without fear to allow the Spirit to gentle and guide me through whatever means She chooses: sources from my own tradition, those of other traditions, using words or no words.
  • I am free to love those that are brought to me whether or not we seem to have things in common or whether we agree on anything.
  • I am free to let go of judgement of another person’s motives and behaviors, while holding one to my own beliefs and convictions.
  • I am free to speak and act for justice and mercy for those who have no voice or agency or protection.
  • I am free to bring my gifts and talents to the communities in which I dwell, and free to say “no” when the call does not have my name on it.
  • I am free to trust my own discernment about where and when the Spirit is inviting me to show up; to quote a beloved teacher, “The need does not constitute the call.”
  • I am free to enter into the deep waters of forgiveness–offering it, asking for it, receiving it–and then “letting it go.” This is applies even when musing on my own failures and shortcomings.
  • I am free to give thanks for the abundances of my life–people who have loved and are still loving me, places I have dwelt where I experienced Holy Presence, moments of “kairos” time, where I with others recognized that surely God was in that place.
  • I am free to continue to be a growing up, all the days I am given to live, not ever needing to call a halt to the practices of Spirit that deepen my understanding of the Holy and how I am called to live and move in the moment.

My understanding of God’s freedom for and in me keeps growing…I keep being set free; I am banking of the words of Jesus from the book of John: If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. May it be so!

Becalmed: Longing for Wind

29 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by in paying attention, Spirit, waiting

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I ventured out to my annual personal retreat last week, hoping to meet Simages-2pirit in all her personae of dove, fire and wind to ignite in me the energy I need both for myself and for those to whom I am called. I arrived at my familiar place (although there were plenty of personnel changes), settled in to a known room (although my favorite was already occupied), entered into well-tried practices to arriving, attending and resting. I walked, I read, I prayed, I listened, and in the first hours I felt the filling begin–no one else to react to, nothing on my to do list, no place to drive, no food to prepare. My brain and heart began to take notes, glad for the spacious interstices between impressions and insights. And then the energy stopped!

I am not sure what had happened. There was evening conversation around the table. There was problematic material in the book I am considering. There was a writing style that unnerved rather than reassured. There was lots of maintenance and construction noise in the surrounding neighborhood. However, as I checked in with my own heart, I noticed that I was becalmed, nothing was flowing and moving ahead. What had begun in energy now lay flat and still. I came to an awareness that even thought I had consciously intended to “come apart and rest for awhile,” another part of me was highly invested in achieving something on this retreat–setting an agenda, working a problem, moving on up a little higher with God.

But I was out of ideas and energy. So I put a stop to my Achiever in order to wait…and I discovered that the Spirit was still moving–in my breath. Breathe on me, Holy Spirit; breathe in me, Breath of God. Evening was falling, light fading, sounds diminishing. And I breathed–breathing out the clutter, breathing in Spirit. Over the next hours I kept reminding my self of the Breath, keeping me alive, even when I was not “accomplishing” anything. Jesus’ words, Come apart and rest awhile, reminded me that one thing was necessary for me, as it was for Mary–to listen to and for the Wind of the Spirit, even when it came in ways that were not Bright Red, or Aero-dynamic or High-Flying. The Sound of Sheer Silence was enough for now.

Over the remaining hours I had set aside, I rested, tuned into the moment in my body and in my mind, trusting that what I needed would be provided when I needed it. Into the rest I continue to take in and expel the Breath of the Spirit, to follow its lead, to let it propel me where it willed. I discovered a forgotten resource for my planning in the trunk of my car. I discarded one vista for another that took me into a peace garden full of Sadako’s cranes surrounding an infinity pool. I prayed for rain in our parched climate where the creek is no longer flowing. I sifted through images that spoke to me of gardens, of grief, of letting go, of loving. I savored poems of beloved poets who continue to feed and nourish my spirit. I drank peppermint iced tea, awaiting me in the pantry. I engaged in appropriate conversation with other retreatants when the time was right. And out of that rest I was led to some sacred texts in books that i had already discarded that had a Word for me in that moment.

When it was time to leave, I was ready. But I had no outline, no calendar, no assignments for people; nor did I have insightful imagining into my own questions and musings. Yet, I had experienced the rest that comes from standing down from even my unconscious lists of “to-dos” and trusting in the freedom that the Breath of the God brings, even, maybe especially when we are out of the energy we generate out of ourselves. I met and was met by the Spirit of Christ, and She set me free.

…where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom!           2 Cor. 3:17

Longing for Water

04 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by in refreshment, renewal, Spirit

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images-2My senses are alert to water! It is summer, the season where I always imagine that refreshment is coming. Ocean, lakes, rivers beckon me to immersion, nourishment and respite.

Yet, my soul is aware of its own dryness.  Maybe it is mirroring the California environment, drought plagued, with wistful longings for El Nino and desalinization projects. Or it may be reflecting the Church in its seemingly endless fights and posturing for power. And what could be more arid than the hue and cry about the premature race for the presidential election next year, in which we cannot trust a word or a character than comes splashing out of the next news cycle? I long for clear fresh water that cleanses, satisfies, and hydrates my spirit.

I have been calling on spiritual images from sacred text and song to give me hope and to dwell in the part of the Mystery that slakes my thirst. I remember my friend at the well in John 4, whose dessicated habits separated her from neighbor and from herself. Yet she got herself to that watering place that noon, and met One who embedded in her “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4: 14). In that spring which he gave her, she met the Holy and she met herself.

So I am trying to notice where the Living Water is located for me in this summer season.

I am finding it in a usual watering hole of reading, primarily sacred reading. Right now I am reading slowly in four different strands of faith: a book of theology on perichoresis by long-time friend of my youth, Dr. Charles Twombly–which prods the ancient boulders of my seminary study into letting trickles of awareness through; a book on Church History about the Beguines, a lay movement of women in Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries, whose story enriches the encouragement I see in 21st Century women all around the world; a book on gratitude by a Mennonite woman in the South with six children who is seeking to live more thankfully; and, possibly most close to my own drying up in aging, a book of reflections by Marilyn Chandler McIntyre, written as if she were a person of faith who had been given a brief amount of time to live. Each of these streams bathes my spirit, delights or challenges, and refreshes my fevered brow.

I find living water from writers and speakers who speak good news to the broken places, to the misinformation that teems around the communication channels. Just this morning I read a cleansing word from someone who had been mightily betrayed by his colleagues who spoke with clarity and graciousness and peace, and another who brought a perspective of gospel to a new flash that the clamoring twitters had missed altogether. Healing streams indeed!

I am also allowing non-verbal springs to replenish my dryness. The iris, the butterflies and the humming birds are like little rivulets of God’s grace through my window. The harmonies of contemporary composers like Stephen Paulus, Arvo Part and Eric Whitacre ripple with waves of hope and faith that fill the parched places in my soul. Paintings–old and new–spark both my remembrance of the faithfulness of the Holy One, while at the same time they cast a vision of what could be, of what is promised.

And I am finding that the my own practice of offering Presence in the lives of those who are suffering keeps my own heart juices flowing. E-mails, snail-mail cards, phone calls, monetary contributions which I send, all remind me that there is Living Water to be received and recycled to others, despite my felt creakiness and aridity. Just showing up in those ways sends my roots rain, as T.S. Eliot prayed.

My summer pump can be primed by flowing Grace if it is trusted and used. This morning these words came to me from The Wisdom of Ben Sirach, a non-canonical pre-Christian source of ethical sayings, speaking of the Holy One:

As a mother shall she meet him…/with the Bread of Understanding shall she feed him,/ And give him the Water of Wisdom to drink. (15-2-3)

May I find that water for my soul and for our world!

Opening my Ears-Lent II

01 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by in Lent, listening, music, scripture

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ListenSantaFeI am practicing openness this Lent–opening myself to God’s presence and letting the angels feed me, as Ronald Rolheiser says. I have begun with the prayer “Open my ears, Lord.” I noticed first that hearing is not my primary sense organ. I rely much more on the eyes, so I have been surprise how often I have had to remind myself to LISTEN each day.

I am certainly not helped by the amount of noise that is around me no matter where I am in this city. Even in the still of the morning I can hear the hum of the freeway two blocks away, and the drone of helicopter and plane as they move over the air lanes toward the two airports with in reach. Often nature itself chimes in with gusty winds, dogs barking to protect their territory, even birds a-squabble in the trees that line my yard. My house has machines humming, doors opening and closing, and computers bursting with YouTube clips, yammering to be played.

The noise that is more insistent come from deep inside, the constant interior chatter of my monkey mind, full of primitive wisdom that is not longer useful, habitual emotional tracks without much basis in reality, and a hummingbird attention span that natters to be fed. So I am invited to LISTEN, an intention which takes time, space and practice.

In this week in which I have focused in listening, I have been mindful of the boy Samuel, who when hearing an intimation of the Holy One calling his name, responded, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.” Along with that prayer, I also pray to discern among the madrigal threads that interweave in my brain and heart, “Which one is the voice of the Holy?” Barring an appearance from the Angel Gabriel, who does not seem to know my address, God speaks to me through other messengers.

I begin with sacred text…listening for the Word that shimmers, or rather rings a bell for me. I am loving the daily lectionary texts, this week from Deuteronomy and Hebrews, reminding me to remember and to rest, two spiritual practices that are not organic for me, but ones which deepen my awareness of the Holy. Once again John’s gospel gives me Jesus is a way that is inviting and compelling.

I hear Presence when I LISTEN to music in a whole-body way–the clarinet of Richard Stolzman, the chorales of the Orthodox monks—all inhabit my being with a sense of the sacred. Sometimes it is my own longing that is carried on the wail of Bonnie Raitt’s voice and guitar. But then, my heart can be  grounded and consoled by a Bach cantata. What I hear opens me to the Holy One.

I keep being reminded to LISTEN to my own heart. The Spirit is in residence there, a gift of God to keep me from being alone, to energize me, to direct me into the next right step. How baffling it is to get so separated from myself so easily, yet how clearly the flow of the Spirit emerges when I turn my heart of LISTEN, to my own heartbeat, and with J. Philip Newell, to the heartbeat of God. It is here where I come to know which ones of the many griefs of the world are mine to notice, to attend to, to act toward healing. It is here that I discover the invitations that have my name on them, and which ones can be let go. It is here that I face the unhealed and unworthy practices in me that call for a turning away and an asking forgiveness.

in the welter of noise that is the world I which I live, I am called to LISTEN in each capsule of time for the one thing necessary to recognize how the Holy One is here, and then to let the angels tune my heart and voice as they feed me. Open my ears, Lord, that I may hear your voice!

How Will I Know The Way?

14 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by in Discernment, pilgrimage

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GrowIt’s always important to know where you are going…if possible! But Thomas, the friend of Jesus, poses my question: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” (Jn.14:5). I am one who is on the journey, but often I am confused or just in the dark about a way forward.

Jesus refers his closest friends back to their journey with him already: “I am the way,” he says. It became a cliche several years back to ask one’s self “What would Jesus do?” But, in many ways we know how to go forward because we have already learned what is important. Jesus taught love, forgiveness, inclusiveness, kindness and compassion. None of those steps or actions can be the wrong steps, no matter where we find ourselves.

And he also promised that his close friends would experience the Spirit living within them, reminding them of the ways of love. In celebrating my retirement, my beloved friend Sandy preached a whiz-bang sermon, in which she likened the Holy Spirit to a spiritual GPS in our travels, giving us course correction, reminding us to back up and turn around, telling when we have taken a wrong route. I have experienced that GPS within me, making itself known in sacred reading, in quiet prayer, in conversation with others. It is a source of creative energy, a fountain which produces ideas that seem to come from nowhere, about how to love, when to be quiet, and ways to think outside the box about knotty problems.

That Spirit also sharpens my senses to signs along the way that I might not be aware of otherwise. While I traveled last fall in northern New Mexico, I came out of my room one morning to see the sign on the grass in front of my room. It invited me to GROW! There were no further instructions at that site, but I was challenged to muse on ways I can still grow. I see that I can still learn to strengthen my body so that I can walk and hike to places I never imagined. I have set myself reading that is beyond my comfort zone, so that my intellect is still gathering and processing points of view that I have never considered. Social media has allowed me to converse with and pray with and for people whom I have not met, but whose view from their location opens me to a wider caring and commitment to the healing of the world that God loves. Signs abound in my life with the Spirit lens with which to view them, and they lead me onward. How could I have known that installing a drought resistant garden in the front yard would bring me a more joyful appreciation of the varieties of creation and prompt me to a deeper commitment to the care of that creation and its resources?

I will know they ways by the journey itself, by the Spirit guide who accompanies me, and points me to signs. The artist Brian Andreas helps me know how to look for them: