Tag: Pentecost

People of the Spirit

A thought on Pentecost Sunday

Gifts given freely

Edith joined a house group I was leading one Lent. The Course was about Prayer and in one session we were encouraged to pray aloud for people and things that concerned us. We were given a week’s notice and just before we were due to meet again, Edith sent for me. She told me that she would have to miss the next session.
She had an anxious and slightly guilty look so I probed a bit deeper. She was scared of praying aloud because she had nothing to pray about. ‘You see, I’m not very spiritual’. I think what she meant was that she wasn’t very pious.
She thought that people had to put on a very posh or sugary voice when they pray believing that you have to speak to the Almighty in a certain way. Edith was too down to earth for that.
So I asked her how her daughter was. She was going through an horrendous divorce. Edith told me all her anxieties and how she hoped God would strengthen her and be with her and the children and so on and so on. At the end I said to her, ’say ’Amen!’’ She asked me what I meant. ‘Well’, I told her, ’you’ve just been praying about your daughter for ten minutes so you might as well say ’Amen’. Edith was no fool and she got it right away. ‘I have, haven’t I?’
‘Now come to the group and do it there again, amongst your friends.’ That is exactly what she did and everyone present promised to pray for her daughter. I saw a life lit up with new joy.

Edith didn’t join the rota for the intercessions. She had a much more important job in the church. She made all the purificators and corporals and albs and surplices. She was an amazing seamstress and everything she made for God’s service was made prayerfully. Every stitch carried it’s own moment of praise. ’It’s important to give God the best’ she would say. ‘After all, look what he’s given to us in Jesus. He’s given us so much love and grace. We must give our all to God!’

Of course, as she reminded me, she wasn’t spiritual!
Yet she gave her all to God and that day when she prayed aloud in that Lent Group, she gave a bit more. And it made her happier than ever. I might just have forgotten to say that she not only made our albs and other linen, she also washed and ironed them! She lots more vestments for the Church—but she wasn’t spiritual!

As we Christians celebrate Pentecost, it’s people like Edith who come to mind because she is an example of those Christians who just use their gifts happily for God and actually don’t realize that they are doing anything more than returning to God the love they have received from Him.
They never think about themselves. They lose themselves in the service of God and others.
I think Edith was one of the most spirit-filled people I’ve ever met.

[Mr G. Pentecost Sunday 2026]

Breath. (Ruach)

This poem was inspired by Peyton Salmon, who when she was just 4 years old, answered a question in Family Church about Pentecost in a profound way. (Piers Northam.)

‘How do we know God?’ She asks.
‘We feel it inside us.’ says the child.
‘And what does it feel like?’
‘It feels like breath…’

It feels like breath:
the engendering, enlivening breath,
the rushing wind,
the gift of life…

This child,
just four years old,
speaks an ancient truth –
a truth not learnt
but lived.

She knows the One
who knit her together
in her mother’s womb:
recognises in a way
that can’t be taught.

Knows herself beloved.

Piers Northam

Nowt nor summat !

nowt nor summat

There is a saying in the North of England (some say it originates in Lancashire, others Yorkshire but I know where my money is!) – it’s neither nowt nor summat.
For the benefit of those not familiar with northern English dialect, it means that it is ‘neither one thing nor the other’.

It is very tempting to say this is what it feels like after Ascension which the Christian Church celebrated last Thursday.
At the feast of the Ascension We were led to the end of the Gospel of St Matthew when Jesus gave his last instructions and final blessing to his followers. Then, before their very eyes, he disappeared into the heavens.
Jesus had told them that they were his witnesses and the task before them was to proclaim His Good News to all Nations. (Matthew 28: 16-end)
In the nowt nor summat time they were to wait until they have been clothed with power from on high (Luke 24: 49). Jesus was, of course, referring to Pentecost when the power of God’s Spirit came upon them in the dramatic way Christians will remember next Sunday.

So we are between the Ascension and Pentecost. We are caught up in what I call a mathematical moment . From Easter Day to Ascension Day is 40 days. The same length as Lent. But Easter is the great Festival time of the Church so it must be the longest season, the ‘jubilee’ season of great rejoicing. So it has been given 50 days. The extra 10 days are those between last Thursday and next Sunday. So we are still in Eastertide!
So this is not quite the negative time I’m suggesting.

According to the New Testament the disciples, together with the women who were special to Jesus, returned from Mount Olivet to the upper room where they devoted themselves to prayer. They also attended to the matter of choosing a successor to Judas. Matthias (whose feast day is May 14^th – today) was chosen by lot.
When I was younger I used to read in the Acts of the Apostles that the lot fell on Matthias! Not being familiar with this form of voting, I wondered, Did it hurt?

Through this sacred vote the disciples were thus ‘complete’ in the number of those who were destined to lead the infant Christian Church. (The sacred number 12 equating to the 12 tribes of Israel in the Old Testament.) The ‘ordination’ for this Leadership—their setting apart for the task, would come at Pentecost. For now they ‘waited’ and they prayed.
Those being ordained to the Church’s ministry today go into ‘retreat’ just before they are commissioned by the Holy Spirit.
The ‘nowt nor summat’ period is a time of getting oneself prepared. It is an inner activity in which God pours out his blessing. The importance of prayer as a time of being prepared by God for some work in His name cannot be over-emphasized. It is a time not of nowt nor summat but of expectant waiting. If God is to act through us, he needs us to be receptive to his Will, his plan. Which is why waiting in prayer is an important part of bringing a new and loving vision to a world (and a Church!) in great need.

I think in such moments of the lovely prayer of St. Teresa of Avila.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours;
no hands but yours; no feet but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ must look out on the world.
Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good.
Yours are the hands with which He is to bless His people.

*Christ has no body now on earth but ours….*

[Mr G]

PS>

There are a few versions of the prayer on YouTube under the title Christ has no body now but yours.
The one by the Exultate Singers is rather beautiful and there an interesting one featuring Josh Garrels.

Spiritual sparks flew

Pentecost (Spiritual sparks flew)

They heard it,
a distant rumble like thunder clearing throat
for some announcement,
an important cosmic moment perhaps?

Sky storm-dark, twists and spirals,
trembles as clouds are seared open,
rent asunder.
Thunder claps gleefully.

Wind blowing, strength growing,
Growling, rushing towards its destiny.
It comes.

She comes,
To stir up lives.
Celestial expectancy
melds with devoted self-offering.

They gather.
They wait.

A sudden, violent cacophony of sound,
Wrenching, twisting, gyring.

Then heaven opened its treasures,
tongues of fire, cascading down.
Dervish flame, whirling ecstatically through the sky.
Descending, anointing,
love flowing into lives gathered for meaning.
Commissioned. Sent out.
Spirit filled joy-givers proclaim Jesus, bright God.

And so, spiritual sparks flew. *

[Mr. G. 6.6.2022]

*this phrase was suggested to me by an article I once read by Bishop Richard Harris.