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On Pentecost*
Spirit of courage,
we stand huddled too,
like the disciples in the upper room,
wondering what is real and true anymore.
Reveal to us the pulse of your fire
in each of our hearts
and send us with bread and roses
out into a world
hungry for nourishment.
Bless us with visions of peace;
carry it across every sky
on wings of a dove.
Help us understand one another
so that we might know
our common purpose in love.
Let the winds of change
rush in and upend all our fears.
Empower us for a more
just and loving future
where we dance with your wild grace.
Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,
Blessings on this Feast of Pentecost my friends.
We live in the midst of chaotic times. As crises continue to build, we may find ourselves confused or fearful. We may want to gather in the upper room of our lives with our closest friends and close the door on a troubled world just like the disciples. Yet chaos always calls for creative response, it always beckons us to open to holy surprise.
Today is the feast of Pentecost, that glorious final day of the season of resurrection. The Apostles were together experiencing bewilderment over how to move forward when the Holy Spirit flows among them and breathes courage into their hearts. If we have stayed committed to our pilgrimage this far then we may still wonder why we have journeyed so long and still are full of fear and unknowing.
It says that those who witnessed this event were “amazed and perplexed.” Some were confused, others cynical. The story of Pentecost asks us a question: How do I let my expectations and cynicism close my heart to the new voice rising like a fierce wind?
Pentecost demands that we listen with a willing heart, and that we open ourselves to ongoing radical transformation. We discover that the Easter pilgrimage does not end here, instead we are called to a new one of sharing our gifts with the world. Soul work is always challenging and calls us beyond our comfort zone. Prayer isn’t about baptizing the status quo, but entering into dynamic relationship with the God who always makes things new. Scripture challenges our ingrained patterns of belief, our habitual attitudes and behavior.
To be fully human and alive is to know the tension of our dustiness, our mortality, to be called to a profoundly healthy humility where we acknowledge that we can know very little of the magnificence of the divine Source of all. The Spirit descends on those gathered together in a small room and breaks the doors wide open. We are reminded that practicing resurrection is not for ourselves alone, but on behalf of a wider community. Not only for those with whom we attend church services, but beyond to the ones who sit at the furthest margins of our awareness. Pentecost is a story of the courage that comes from breaking established boundaries.
Starting on June 1st I am leading a 4-week writing retreat called The Wisdom of Wild Grace: An Online Writing Retreat for the Wild Soul inspired by my poetry collection of the same title. In this collection I include 30 poems about the saint and animal stories which appear throughout Christian tradition, especially in the desert and Celtic lineages.
There is a story about St. Ciaran, one of the early Irish monks, found in the marvelous book Beasts and Saintsby Helen Waddell (a compendium of stories of desert and Celtic monks and their encounters with animals) in which he encounters a wild boar who was made tame by God.
“That boar was St. Ciaran’s first disciple or monk, as one might say, in that place. For straightway that boar, as the man of God watched, began with great vigor tearing down twigs and grass with his teeth to build him a little cell.”
After building him his cell, other animals came from their dens to accompany St. Ciaran, “(a)nd they obeyed the saint’s word in all things, as if they had been his monks.” I love this image of the animals as St. Ciaran’s first monks, I love that they formed his original community. One of the great delights of the desert and Celtic monastic tradition are the abundance of stories of saints’ special connection to animals as a sign of their holiness.
This is one sign of Pentecost living – expanding our awareness even wider and discovering that the animals might be the original monks and we have so much to learn from them.
Join me for the writing retreat which begins with a live session and then includes daily practices for the following four weeks. These prompts will come from the stories of the saints and animals and will invite you to enter into these stories with the heart to cultivate intimacy with the holy wild.
With great and growing love,
Christine
Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE
Image © Christine Valters Paintner
*Blessing is from Christine’s book A Book of Everyday Blessings: 100 Prayers for Dancing Monks, Artists, and Pilgrims (Ave Maria Press)
