Pentecost
John 14: 23-31
Jesus replied, “He who truly
loves me reveals my Spirit, and my Father will love him and we will come to him
and prepare with him a dwelling in the everlasting [an eternal dwelling]. He
who does not love me cannot reveal my Spirit. And the spirit power of the word
that you hear is not from me; it is the speaking of the Father who sent me.
I have said this to you while I am still with you.
But he who is called down, the health-bringing Spirit, whom the Father will
send in my name, he will teach you everything and will awaken within you all
that I have said to you.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do
not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do
not be afraid [have no fear].
You have heard how I said to you, ‘I am going away,
and yet I am coming to you’. If you loved me you would rejoice because I am
going to the Father[ly Ground of the World], for the Father is mightier than I
am.
I have told you now, before it happens, so that
when it happens you may find trust. I no longer have much to say to you, for
soon the prince of this world is coming. Yet over me he has no power.
But the world shall see in this how I love the
Father [Ground of the World] and how I act in accordance with the Father’s
purpose, as it was entrusted to me. Arise, let us go on from here. [let us be
on our way.]
June 2,
2009
Yet note in the poem
that the spirit wind will take away anything we have to offer—even the withered
petals and leaves of our failures. For on the back of the spirit-wind comes the
purifying fire, the fire of love, creative of being. Autumn’s leaves and
withered petals will spirited away to be burned, but there will always be the water in the fountain, so that
even what has died will be transformed into new life
Whittuesday
John 14:23-31
Another image in the
Pentecost story is the picture, or rather the sound of the wind. The disciples
are sitting together in prayer, shut up in a room, when the roaring of a strong
wind is heard. This sound fills the whole house. And on the back of the wind
comes a fire, tongues of the flame of spirit awareness, which settle over each
of them. A heightened understanding of the great truth of things, that the
universe is permeated by love, is often accompanied by an awareness of one’s
own smallness.
The poet describes this
Pentecostal mood:
The wind, one
brilliant day, called
to my soul with
an odor of jasmine.
"In return
for the odor of my jasmine,
I'd like all the
odor of your roses."
"I have no
roses; all the flowers
in my garden are
dead."
"Well then,
I'll take the withered petals
and the yellow
leaves and the waters of the fountain."
The wind left.
And I wept. And I said to myself:
"What have
you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?"[1]
Expanded awareness is the key to
Pentecost, and expanded awareness inevitably means the pain of an expanded and
true self-awareness.
www.thechristiancommunity.org
[1]
Antonio Machado, “The Wind, One
Brilliant Day”, translated by Robert Bly.
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