Dear Diocese,
We just passed both Pentecost and Trinity in the church calendar. On Pentecost Sunday, the Holy Spirit gets top billing. Then God and Jesus push their way back in to the subject of our faith the following week on Trinity Sunday, when we give all three equal billing.
After what I confess was a very quick first glance at the readings for Trinity Sunday, the word that stuck out for me was Spirit.
The reason? Well, I just spent the first part of this morning working on an invitation to celebrate the spirit exhibited by the many people who are engaged in varying degrees in the ministry we call the Diocesan Environment Network (DEN).
Then I watched a You Tube video distributed by a group in the UK called Christian Climate Action, a group of Christians committed to caring for creation mostly made up of people from the Church of England. The video was a livestream of one of their members, a woman who sat in front of a church under a sandwich board in the middle of the street in downtown London. Cars honked. Drivers lost patience. She persevered and didn’t move. The sandwich board sign said, “I’m terrified about the future for our kids because of climate change”. It made a clear statement about her concern for future generations. Her spirit and commitment as a Christian to speak out in her own unique way was evident.
The Holy Spirit can be strong, bold and right in your face as it was in London this morning. As much as that woman was right in the face of motorists. As it is when people from DEN stand in solidarity with others who call themselves environmental activists, demanding environmental justice.
The Holy Spirit can also be as soft and gentle as it was on Thursday evening during the wrap up of Season 3 of DEN’s Thursday evening gatherings.
That night many of the regulars and a few others engaged in a more sedate meditative practice DEN calls “Stations of Creation” using the photography Donna Giles from the Hope & Inspiration Gallery of the Arts. (FYI: The resources for that meditative practice and another called “the Art of Sharing” can be used borrowed for your parish in hard copy or on line and will soon be available by video on our DEN You Tube channel.)
At the end of the meditation, through the wonders of Zoom technology, the presence of the Holy Spirit and the sense of peace and serenity from that spiritual practice was palpable. The Holy Spirit was at work refreshing people who are actively engaged in caring for God’s creation, building an even stronger bond among those involved in the DEN Thursday evening community of faith.
The Holy Spirit can be a loud or soft or somewhere in between, when we pick up litter in the ditches or plastic off the beach as part of our prayer life, as a spiritual practice.
All are welcome to connect with DEN, a diverse community of disciples who put their spirituality into practice in a variety of ways, from the bold to the sedate, or somewhere in between, each person striving to understand their call to care for God’s creation and each other, united in spirit.
As a result, I am constantly left in awe of the work of the Holy Spirit moving throughout a growing DEN community, composed of both people connected to the church and others whatever their faith.
The days are getting longer and as summer approaches, I pray you will follow government recommendations, spending more time outdoors for your psychological and spiritual health, preparing for a time when we can meet safely again face to face. May the Trinity, God, Jesus and Holy Spirit blessings us with the beauty of creation, moving us to tread on the earth softly and gently, praying for climate justice and a better post pandemic normal.
