Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit, that elusive presence;
Who can pin it down?
Like a fragile butterfly captured in mid flight
and pinned to a cardboard.
Who would want to do that?
Or a pin on a map, marking a place;
Here it is; that's the spot!
No, it's not.

Rather like the feathery tendrils of smoke from a candle
weaving in and among us.
Or sometimes like the billowing clouds of smoke from a raging campfire
chasing us to and fro
or inviting us to bask in the light of the flames reaching heavenward.

Dry Bones

How fitting it seems to me that this week's lectionary includes the text from Ezekiel (Ezekiel 37: 1-14.) My husband and I are continuing our journey of mutual unemployment. We feel somewhat like those dried up old bones. We both feel as though we have been chewed up, spit out and left to die-- he by the corporate world and myself by church bureaucracy. With each ignored resume these bones become drier and more brittle.  With each rejection, the dust settles more deeply. As more time goes by the valley feels lower, sinking with our spirits.

Will God breathe life into these old bones?  Will he lay sinews and flesh on them and cover them with skin?

Lord, please put your spirit within us that we might live and know that you have spoken and will act.

A Shoot

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins. The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.   (Isaiah 11:1-10  NRSV)

We have yucca plants in our yard. They have sharp points at the ends of their leaves and my kids were young when we moved in.  I decided that yuccas were…well…yucky.  So I set out to rid our yard of those yucky yuccas.  You cannot get rid of yuccas.  Their roots are deep and far reaching, and any tiny piece of root becomes a new yucca plant.  At times I felt like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Fantasia who chopped up a broom only find a multitude of brooms.

One day I dug up a large piece of root that had a couple of shoots on it.  It sat on the carport for more than nine months with no water, no soil and only a little bit of light.  The shoot had turned brown.  Surely there was no life left.  But my mom wanted it, so she took it to her home in the country and planted it.   Lo and behold by the end of the year she had a yucca growing in her yard!

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.