Sliders
"Then they laid hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit."
It is pretty easy to forget about the Holy Spirit, if we ever even get him in the first place. As I have been planning the direction of this article, I think maybe I have come up with a title for these: Sliders. These articles are like little bite sized sandwiches, tasty little reflections to chew on, but without a whole lot of substance. This title really comes from today's topic, the Holy Spirit, because there's not nearly enough space on this page to even begin to do it justice. And I've already wasted a whole paragraph, and probably won't even keep this title. Maybe Bites would work better?
Anyway...
It is pretty easy to forget about the Holy Spirit, if we ever even get him in the first place. The Holy Spirit usually gets minor billing: the Third Person of the Trinity, hardly a mention in the Gloria, passed over quickly in the Creed, last in the Sign of the Cross. It's easy to imagine and, in some ways, to relate to the Father (an old man with a white beard who created everything) and the Son (a younger man, also with a beard, who died on the cross and rose again). Of course, these images are too much like us to be accurate. I mean, we need to have a bigger image of the Father and the Son, but at least there is an easy starting point.
The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, is a dove? a wind? a breath? a tongue of fire? wisdom? truth? an advocate? Hard to pin down, really. A friend of mine who is a priest in Ireland used to like the image of a dancing and twirling red headed gypsy woman for the Holy Spirit. Well, why not? It may be as accurate and a lot more concrete. But you see the problem here: there isn't a single good image as a starting point to relate to the Holy Spirit. He is hard to define.
And he's a little harder to follow. The Father gave us the Ten Commandments through Moses and Jesus gave us the Golden Rule, the two great commandments, and the Sermon on the Mount with the beatitudes. The Holy Spirit gives us gifts (wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord) and fruits (charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, and chastity). There's not a whole lot of structure there. It's kind of left up to us in the variety of life. I like to play by the rules (and, by the way, I like to win, too), but the Holy Spirit is just a tad more unpredictable and, maybe, untamed.
It may just be easier to forget about the Holy Spirit if we don't even get him in the first place. But that would be too comfortable for the faith, our faith, to have any real value. Sometimes, I would prefer to have the faith wrapped up in a neat little package, or a bite sized sandwich. The faith is more like the victory feast following a wild game hunt. And the Holy Spirit leads us there: right there, past the edge of comfort, safety, predictability, certainty and, dare I say, boredom to the exhilaration of trust. Step out onto the water! Put out into the deep! Ascend the heights! Breathe, Holy Spirit! Blow, Holy Spirit! Burn, Holy Spirit! Fly, Holy Spirit! Come, Holy Spirit, come!
So, are you ready for Pentecost? Are you sure?