Now when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. – Luke 3:21-22a
The water gently swirled about their legs as John and Jesus stepped into the stream, the echoes of John’s fierceness still perceivable in those who stood upon the bank, and those who dripped the water of forgiveness.
The water may be gentle, but the fire promised by the Baptist came descending. Like a dove, indeed, but doves are sharp of claw and though they promise coming home they promise nothing gentle on the way.
The river’s soft embrace receded, puddling on the riverbank. The Holy Spirit’s fire ignited in the eyes beneath the water-speckled lashes. The one who had, with hardly any word, descended peacefully, has risen purposefully.
Was there a word for John? Who knows. Perhaps a hand to brush the drying skin which shortly would be washed again with washing someone else. The fire drove him from the water to the wilderness.
O Gentle Spirit, how do humans dare to call You gentle, source of prophets’ words, apostles’ energy, and martyrs’ blood? Indeed the Baptist said it true, that though he washed with water, You baptize your followers with fire.
A poem/prayer based on Luke 3:15-17, 21-22, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year C, Baptism of the Lord.
He was a recently hatched pueo and he didn’t want to fly.
As far as he was concerned, nest living was plenty good. His father came by with food. His mother got it into bite-sized bits that he, well, bit. He had two sisters in the nest with him and their mother stayed with the three of them. When it was cold her feathers spread over them kept them nice and warm. When the sun got too strong during the day her wings gave them shade. When it rained they were all snug beneath her body and wings.
He didn’t mind leaving the nest. Once his legs were strong enough, he’d hop out and go exploring. So did his sisters. They didn’t go far so they didn’t find much except grass and rocks and more grass, but it made them feel like bold adventurers.
But he didn’t want to fly.
The problem was the wind. The nest was in a spot in the saddle between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, and the mountains funneled the wind between their slopes and peaks so that it just howled them. When he’d first stood up to go exploring, a few stronger gusts had knocked him down three times. His legs got stronger after that so it didn’t happen again, but that wind kept going and he didn’t feel any better about it.
“If that wind is going to blow like that,” he said, “I’m not flying. The ground will work just fine for me.”
His mother didn’t quite believe him, so she ignored it when he said this. His sisters took this as an opening to tease him, so they did, but they didn’t take it seriously, either. “Not going to fly, right,” they told him as they settled down to sleep. “You’ll change your mind about that soon enough.”
But as they started to exercise their new-feathered wings, flapping them up and down and front and back, he didn’t do anything of the kind. “This is going to be so cool!” one of his sisters told him.
“Cold, more likely,” he said, “without Mom’s feathers to keep you warm.”
They day his sisters took their first flight, he stayed in the nest. “I’m not going to fly,” he told his mother. “As long as that wind is blowing, the ground is fine for me.”
She might have stayed to argue but her daughters were hopping up and down and squawking about taking their first flight, so she had to pay attention to them. It didn’t take long before all three were in the air, climbing away from the nest.
“As long as the wind is blowing like this,” he said again, “I’m staying on the ground.”
The wind, in fact, blew harder. He had to lean forward into it to stay upright. It dropped to almost nothing so that he stumbled and spread his wings for balance. In that moment the wind blew a great big gust that billowed under his wings and lifted him into the air.
He was so startled that he froze with his wings still extended, rather than folding them right there and getting an uncomfortable return to the ground. He soared higher up, the wind lifting him without so much as a wingbeat. With some small movements of his tail feathers, he turned one way and another, rose up and swooped down.
When he returned to the ground and the nest, his sisters and mother were there. “You’re not going to fly, huh?” his sisters teased.
“The wind is still blowing,” said his mother.
“It lifted me up,” said her son. “I didn’t think it would do that.”
His mother nodded. “Welcome, son,” she said, “to creatures who are held on the wind.”
There are plenty of uncomfortable and even scary things in the world. Some of these things – like God – are much bigger than we are. They may make us feel overwhelmed. And some of these things – it’s best to figure out what they are – will be there to lift us up and help us fly. One of those great powers is God. The Spirit blows as it will, it’s said, and the Spirit blows to help us fly.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
I write these stories ahead of time, but I don’t read them when I’m telling them. My memory leaves things out and my creativity adds things, so what you read and what you hear will not be the same.
The wind made its way across the ocean. In the distance it could see the green slopes of Hawai’i Island and the great mountains rising. As it swept over the sea, it took water vapor that the sun had raised from the waters and pushed it ahead as growing clouds. As the clouds passed over Hilo, they showered the earth with rain.
The wind moved on, and now the clouds dispersed on the shoulders of the mountains, and the sun poured down in shimmering waves. The wind blew through the town and over the fields, and it cooled the stifling heat. As it did, it blew hard enough to pluck hats from heads and turn umbrellas inside out before they could be closed.
A nene near seaside turned into the wind and spread her wings. The flowing air began to lift her even before she swept them down in a powerful stroke. The wind helped carry her aloft until she turned to fly inland.
Not just birds, but seeds flew on the wind, so that new plants would grow.
In places the wind eased things, but in places I have to admit that the wind broke things. Nails in a roof popped loose. An old tree tumbled to the ground, where its trunk would nourish new trees yet to grow there. A sudden gust scattered a myna’s nest over the ground, and the parents-to-be screeched and started building again.
The flowing wind swept over the summit of Kilauea, where fumes rise from the volcano’s liquid heart beneath. It carried the sulfur and tiny flecks of glassy ash further along the island, dispersing them as it went. Oh, they smelled it and they frowned in Kona!
But when the sun set, those bits of glassy ash caught the light and glowed in red and orange and gold. The people and the creatures and the birds gazed at it with satisfaction. “It’s a Kona sunset,” they said.
The wind laughed to hear them say it, for the Kona sunset depends on the Kilauea wind.
And the wind blew on, far over the Pacific Ocean to lands far distant from our shores, blowing where it will.
It’s an old, old thing to compare the Holy Spirit of God to the winds that blow across our planet. In the ancient languages of the Bible, and also in Hawaiian (but not in English) the words for “wind,” “breath,” and “spirit” are the same: Ruach. Pneuma. Ha. Like the winds of earth, the Holy Spirit brings the things of life, for the spirit as well as the body. Like the wind beneath the wings of the birds, the Holy Spirit can lift us up. Like the wind that brings down trees, the Holy Spirit will shake our ideas and assumptions and make us consider new things. Like the wind that creates a Kona sunset, the Holy Spirit creates, helps us create, and helps us appreciate, beauty.
The Holy Spirit is God’s gift to the world, to the Church of Jesus, and most of all, to you.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
On Sunday I tell the story from memory of the story I’ve written – and I rarely strive to remember it word for word. The differences are part of the creative process – or so I tell myself.
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