I suppose this week, if it has taught me anything, has taught me how much God is real, and God is with us, and we just don’t pay any attention. This Pentecost story, that we think is so remarkable, is just another example.
We all receive the gift of the Holy Spirit all of the time. And it always inspires us like a tongue of fire. And it gives us always a gift of transcending space and time and culture, so we can all just get along. And we always just interpret it as something odd. But that’s because, most of the time, we live with our God blinders pulled down. So open the blinds my friends and see that God is with you, the Spirit of God is with you.
Here is God doing what God does.
How is it that the power of the Holy Spirit is in your gay life every day and you aren’t paying attention? Probably in little ways. I like, for instance, how my husband comes downstairs to dinner when he smells what’s cooking. That’s the Holy Spirit drawing him near to me through marinara sauce/gravy. Well, it is … he smells the food and he comes to be near to me. I love that.
He hardly talks to me. I guess we don’t have much to say any more after 34 years. But, today I overheard him animatedly telling a story. He is a great storyteller. Well, that was the Holy Spirit animating him. And animating me listening to him, and loving listening to him.
Paul says the Spirit intercedes for us with “sighs too deep for words.” I love that line. Yes, sighs, too deep for words. Like the cries of whales, or the sound of the rain on the rooftop at night.
God is with us my friends. It only sounds like Babel if you aren’t listening.
*Pentecost (Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:25-35, 37; Romans 8:22-27; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15)
©2012 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.
Dimensions of Reality: glbt Christian spirituality 