the language of the spirit

“Unless you receive the kingdom of God like a child…”

Praise is the language of the spirit,
an expression of joy, gratitude, wonder.
Children, with their almost innate sense of things,
speak it freely and spontaneously;
adults engage in the difficult labor
of learning this new vocabulary,
struggling to remember
a language they have,
for the most part, forgotten.
Praise, for most adults, is a foreign language.

“It is he that has made us, and not we ourselves…”

We master the language of the spirit
as we abandon pride,
aware that we are creatures,
the Lord having formed us,
filling us with the breath of life.
Gradually we let go of the attachments
and find ourselves
in the geography of the spirit,
“lost in wonder, love and praise”.

“Let everything that breathes praise the Lord.”

We enter fully into Pentecost
as we receive the gift of the indwelling spirit.
We are filled with the breath of God,
the new wine of liberation,
and in the process we discover
that we are learning a new language,
the language of the spirit,
the language of praise.
To speak the language of Pentecost
implies a conversion of the imagination:
What God has cleansed
is no longer profane,
in Christ there is no east or west,
through baptism there is
neither Jew nor Greek,
slave nor free,
male nor female.
The dispersed exiles are gathering in,
the communion of the saints
welcomed at the gospel feast
where every soul is Jesus’ guest,
the spirit poured out on all flesh,
just as the prophet had promised.