by Robert Calhoun

This past month, during the first week of May, I was sitting on a bench outside a coffee shop beside the Big Thompson River as it coursed its way through Estes Park… a cool day, the water level on the rise with spring rains and early snow melt. Sipping coffee with a book, notepad, and pen in hand.  People passing by.

When first sitting down, I noticed a large fluffy gray jay…gripping tightly to a lone boulder in the middle of the stream. A mature bird, feathers periodically ruffled by the breeze…he appeared comfortable…I imagined him to be contemplating what he saw both near and far…as he held this space on the boulder in midstream.  My eyes often returning to my winged friend, wondering what he saw, what he knew.  He was there for what seemed a very long time, while pages turned in my book.

And then, at one moment looking up from my reading…. I saw the boulder was bare. I had not seen him fly away.  Now just a bare boulder, a space that earlier was filled with my feathered friend.  

I was surprised how the image of that empty rock grabbed… held my attention. This empty, vacated, space without the gray jay had my full attention now.

Empty spaces. What to do with empty spaces?…….spaces where what was is no longer; or spaces where something has always been missing, spaces yet to be filled……spaces that appear suddenly or spaces that capture our attention slowly over time? Empty spaces due to the natural changes of life…..spaces ripped open by the unexpected. How do we experience, how do we respond to, those spaces before us and within us?
 
Empty spaces call up many feelings and reactions…curiosity, compassion, excitement for a new start, hopefulness ….or confusion, heartache, doubt, fear, hopelessness…… it is not unusual for us to fill empty spaces with distractions, even false gods, so as not to even notice what is missing.

What do we do, how do we wait… for what or for whom do we listen? 

My thoughts went to Good Friday at noon-time in our Plymouth sanctuary where I and one other…were in that quiet space for almost an hour, a space which spoke of emptiness, waiting.  What or who if anyone holds that space with us?

Perhaps Jesus wondered, as he waited….in the wilderness....or in the garden.

Or Mary outside the tomb.

Or twelve apostles “all together in one place,” and Mary, the mother of Jesus, as they gathered in a house on Pentecost, along with the many others who gathered as was the Jewish custom at the end of the grain harvest…..The twelve apostles aware of an empty space, remembering, wondering what to expect, waiting for what may be next if anything….

I have read about Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, theologian and mystic… at the corner of Fourth and Walnut Street in downtown Louisville, Kentucky in the 1950’s… watching, waiting, not yet imagining what was about to come….

You have had your times….I have……moments when what has your full attention is the "bare boulder," the empty space that cannot be ignored….times when the messenger has disappeared, belief seems hollow…when what you thought you believed no longer makes sense, even belief in yourself….times when nothing seems to be holding the space in front of you…when what was reassuring…is gone and its absence is what fills you.

Life………waiting for the phone call that does not come…… receiving the phone call you do not want to receive….starting out in life without a clue where to go…..a sudden lack of purpose….the end of a relationship…

…standing at the grave of your parent, child… partner…….or times when the thoughts of past traumas take over your mind…. perhaps the "empty-nest" time, or the aging process and the awareness of approaching death…… 

… spaces that speak of emptiness….These days, the nightly news often speaks of empty spaces: uncertainty, lack of civility… divisiveness…one more shooting…. excluded from entrance for simply being who you are….us against them.

The twelve apostles gathered “all together in one place,” in a house, and the many others gathered as was the custom at Pentecost. 

Perhaps that is the meaning of faith…to gather together, to still gather even when the space before us is empty…still gather when the road ahead is unclear. 

Perhaps that is faith… for us to keep gathering as a Plymouth community, week after week, even in times when the "boulder" is empty, when something is missing, the promise seems distant…..still gather when our efforts to be welcoming seem futile…. to gather together, share bread together… where we hold the empty spaces for each other…and together see what is, what is not, and what has always been.  To still gather, remember, wait……wait for the signs of reassurance, wait for our eyes and hearts to open to the loving presence that holds the space with us, shines light into dark places……

…reminding us of our birthright, that we are not alone, as love unfolds before us and among us and we move out into the world with boldness and compassion knowing that "God is still speaking."

These things I pondered sitting on a bench outside a coffee shop on a spring morning alongside the Big Thompson River.  And then, as if unaware until that very moment, I felt the rush of the wind upon my face, the branches waving, and heard the loud, mighty, sounds of the rushing water as if many voices were speaking all at once….and now all of that energy had my full attention and I left that bench and began walking on the crowded sidewalk, enlivened by something familiar but for which I could not name, with the sense we were not separate, not alone, but were all walking together with the One who breathes with us.

Sasha Steensen
Pentecost Sunday
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, CO

I am, by trade, a poet and a professor. In order to write poetry, I have to give myself over to the mysterious work of language, and in order to teach, I have to be comfortable speaking to groups of students about abstract concepts. Despite this training, I was, at first, incredibly intimidated by idea of speaking on the subject of the Holy Spirit. I asked myself, how does one begin to talk about something so experiential, something that cannot, by its very nature, be fully articulated? As I considered these questions, though, I realized that talking about poetry might have equipped me, in some small way, to talk about the Holy Spirit.   
 
Working with words, one soon realizes their limitations. We know the language we have created to communicate with one another, though full of beauty, is, in the end, also insufficient. The Holy Spirit touches that part of us that cannot be reached in the usual ways. Language’s failure becomes the holy spirit’s entrance point. Paul writes of this in his first letter to the Thessalonians when he says, “our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit with full conviction.”
 
In times of desperation or, conversely, in times of great joy, I have felt this wordless, but convicting presence. Maybe you have felt this as well. I often experience this presence as a revelation. William Paul Young wrote, “The work of the holy spirit in our lives is to reveal the truth of our being so that the way of our being can match it.” The Holy Spirit, then, calls me to first see myself anew, and then to meet that self rather than to return to some false self that is concerned not with God’s will for my life but instead with the image of myself that I wish to project to others. The Holy Spirit, then, asks me to consider who God called me to be rather than who I think others might expect or want me to be.
 
Hal asked that I talk specifically about my experiences with the Holy Spirit, and I could offer several examples of the way the Holy Spirit has revealed the truth of my being and called me to meet that truth, but I will give just one example. Two years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Up until that point, I had prided myself on being strong, both physically and emotionally. I was someone who believed I was independent, someone who had worked hard to achieve my goals as a writer and an academic all the while birthing and raising two daughters. I assumed I had everything under control, and I aimed to project that to others.
 
The revelation I faced with my diagnosis is that the strength I had prided myself on was an illusion. Cancer was not something I could fix on my own, not something I could control. I had to embrace vulnerability, live in it and exist there, which was something that was incredibly uncomfortable for me. As I underwent tests and procedures, there was no denying that in this moment I was being called to confront a truth of myself that I had long tried to ignore. 
 
On the one hand, I turned to language, as I often do, to see what words might have to offer, and I learned that I might need to reconsider the words I had previously used to describe myself to myself—words like strength and independence were replaced with words like vulnerability and connectedness. But there was also a feeling that I could not shake, a conviction, we might call it,  that these simple substitutions were an insufficient response to the Holy Spirit’s calling.   
 
It was a feeling of deep need for God’s all-encompassing presence, and that need demanded a response of some kind. To return to William Paul Young’s words, the Holy Spirit had revealed a truth of my being that now needed to be matched by the way of my being. It was at this moment that I was introduced, not coincidentally I’m sure, to the practice of Centering Prayer. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Centering Prayer requires silence and sitting; it requires the practitioner to relinquish control and to open oneself to a force which is outside of language.
 
If I had relied on words and strength to engage with the world prior to my cancer, the Holy Spirit, I believe, was going to use that experience to call me to a wordless place characterized by deep vulnerability. It is here, in this wordless, vulnerable space that I feel most bolstered by God. As I practice centering prayer, I often experience failure. I am unable to turn off the noisy mind, which is characteristic of the desire to control. While I am attempting to sit quietly so that I might be in the presence of the Holy Spirit, I find myself making lists, making plans, fretting, constructing conversations I need to have at work or with my family. And then, from time to time, I am able to quiet myself and see that what this practice is really about is to reveal to me how little control I actually have. Here in this failure to sit quietly, I am confronted with the need for God. And this neediness is, somewhat paradoxically, deeply comforting.
 
And that is, in my experience, one of the hallmarks of the Holy Spirit—paradox. I think of a story Richard Rohr tells of a man coming to him in deep despair after losing a business he had worked for decades to build, a business he had prided himself on. Without his business, and in this space of profound failure, he didn’t know who he was any more. In response to the man’s despair, Rohr said, “Hallelujah.” Rohr is celebrating the paradox of loss as gain. The man who had understood himself as a success must now understand himself as a failure and in this understanding, he has readied himself for transformation. This is the paradox Jesus tell us of in Matthew 16:25 when he says, “For if you want to save your own life, you will lose it; but if you lose your life for my sake, you will find it.” This isn’t something that happens once, but something we are called to do on a daily basis and in ways we cannot foresee. In my experience, when I am called into a place of contradiction, a place that is uncomfortable, unfamiliar, contrary to what I think I already know, the Holy Spirit is at work. The truth of my being is revealed so that I might, not through my own strength but through God’s, be transformed.