Take a few moments and picture in your mind your most intense good memory, the one event that you would relive in an instant without any hesitation. It might be the moment you met your first love. Perhaps it is the day your beloved walked down the aisle, the day your children were born, or the beginning of an especially wonderful vacation. I would guess that most of you have several of these special memories.
Even as you open and relive this wonderful memory, I imagine that your body is relaxing into the memory, your face is softening into a smile, your heart rate is decreasing and your breathing is slowing down. You are happy and at peace.
One such memory for me happened many years ago during a Boy Scout campout. I have long forgotten which camp it was but I clearly remember the day. It was a warm, cloudy, grey autumn afternoon. We were given some free time before getting ready for dinner and an evening around the campfire.
In the rising wind I decided to take a solitary walk in the woods. Overhead the clouds were sailing, the trees were moving in the wind, and the air smelled of pine. I walked to the edge of the bluff and looked down at the moving sea of trees below. I knew God was all around me and that I was feeling the Breath of God, the movement of the Holy Spirit, the very movement of the universe, and that it was a holy time and place. To this very day my spirit thrills as I remember that autumn afternoon.
I think of that wonderful windy autumn day often during the season of Pentecost. I love windy days because they remind me of the Spirit of God as it moves in, around, and through our lives. We are people of the Spirit. We talk about our church being a Spirit-filled place. It is what gives us life.
Pentecost is the Green Season, the longest season of the church calendar year. It is the time when, like the agriculture around us, we develop, grow and deepen in our knowledge and service to the Lord. Use this time wisely to spiritually feed yourself. Allow the wind to blow through you, cleaning out the cobwebs of your life. Let it shake down the deadwood and open yourself up so that God’s Light can shine in and new growth can occur.
As flowers mature and open, and fruit grows and ripens, so may your spirit flower with kindness, wisdom and joy. May your fruits be love and service. Become the glorious blessing that God intends you to be. Reach out and touch the lives of others so that they too may feel the winds of God’s Spirit blowing through them.
May God richly bless you and keep you.
With deepest affection,
Fr. David