One of my spiritual sisters who was not yet a spiritual sister at the time asked me, early in our relationship, how I would explain the Trinity — the whole Father, Son and Holy Spirit thing.
She is an ordained minister, so I knew I was in way over my head. Determined not to choke on my inability to express the incomprehensible, I spent about seven minutes talking myself into a tangled mess before throwing up my hands and saying, “I have no idea what I just said but I’m pretty sure it didn’t make any sense.”
We still laugh about it.
Yesterday, I told another new spiritual friend that I’d always found it easier to wrap my head around the Holy Spirit than the Creator God and his incarnate Son. Frankly, a lot of the stuff surrounding the Father and the Son leaves me with questions that have never been answered in a way that works for my limited human understanding. It seems to me, at times, that people — me included — are too determined to make human sense out of spiritual truth.
But the Holy Spirit, now that makes sense to me in a way that requires no reasoning or logic.
The Holy Spirit is the part that whispers into my heart to let me know when I’m in the presence of something holy that I might not otherwise recognize. The Holy Spirit is the part that settles over me like a soft blanket when I finally let go of my ideas about how things ought to be. The Holy Spirit is an unfolding wisdom so deep that the best we can do is drag it down a notch or two and call it synchronicity or serendipity. The Holy Spirit is the spark of something divine that I sometimes recognize in others, more rarely recognize in myself and am sometimes blessed to recognize in myself and others all at the same time, which lifts me into something I call joy — and joy is as impossible to describe to those who have never felt it as the Holy Spirit is to those who have never given themselves over to experience it.
Maybe the best thing about the Holy Spirit, for me, is that I can’t explain it, I can only attempt to explain how it feels. We’ve allowed it to remain a mystery, instead of draping it in theology or language or stories that will always fall short. Maybe that’s why it makes sense to me: it’s the part of God that we’ve left alone, that we are powerless to tame or label or contain. All we can do is welcome it.
Yeah.
“too determined to make human sense out of spiritual truth” –
Wasn’t it a bunch of humans who came up with the “spiritual truth” of a doctrine of the trinity? Would we come up with the same doctrine today if we didn’t have to fit it into a fourth century mold?
“Maybe the best thing about the Holy Spirit, for me, is that I can’t explain it”
Keep up the good work.
Oh contrare! You explained it quite well! That means you wouldn’t make it as a theologian.
Once again, Peg, you have raised my spiritual awareness with your insight. How can we wrap our minds around something so etheral? To do so we must experience an awakening that relies first on a leap of faith which eventually leads to a personal proof. That leap always seems to be the hardest thing for one to do. You have done so and your thoughts are a breath of fresh air.
Yes, you have described it- it has to be experienced, and for me,it has nothing to do with religion, though sometimes religious events or readings can stir contact with the spirit. Sometimes they can block out the spirit. I also experience the spirit as a protective, guiding presence . And a reminder, whenever I touch it, that all is well and I really AM ok.