“This is the real Pentecost experience. When the Spirit descended on the disciples huddling together in fear, they were set free to move out of their closed room into the world. As long as they were assembled in fear they did not yet form community. But when they had received the Spirit, they became a body of free people who could stay in communion with each other even when they were as far from each other as Rome is from Jerusalem. Thus, when it is the Spirit of God and not fear that unites us in community, no distance of time or place can separate us.” ― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Spiritual Life Is one of the things you find yourself longing for this Pentecost connection? Relationship within a fearless community, connected to one another by one Spirit, God’s Spirit? Pentecost makes this possible. Even across time and space, we are, in fact, connected to the other humans who also carry this Spirit within them. Many of us have been separated physically from most of our community the past year–plus (though in many places, this is beginning to end - there is light at the end of some of our tunnels!). What is it like to think that, even in all that time apart, the Spirit of God was still connecting you? How does it help in the awkward process of regaining spaces you had lost, being in physical space with some of your community once again? Or, if you are not yet near friends and family again, how is it comforting to think of the Spirit present within-you-and-them? How does it free you, this awareness of – not just wishful thinking, but - *real*, *actual* connectedness? *** May you experience the reality of your connectedness this Pentecost. Amen. ***

Posted by Jamie Bonilla at 2021-05-21 13:45:45 UTC