The Gifts of Spirit

After pilgrimage—after Rome’s domes and relics, after kneeling where saints have knelt and lighting candles in churches where prayers never sleep—I came home and resumed my place in the analytical chair. My body remembered how to listen, how to hold silence with reverence like a chalice. And, part of me remained in the rhythm of pilgrimage: the slow steps, the scent of incense, the echo of Ave Maria in stone corridors.

Then came our annual Book Club retreat. Earlier than most years and a schedule change that demanded adjustments. Grief and disappointment when these adjustments could not accommodate us all. An empty seat at the table. Always the presence of absence rather than the absence of presence.

Whether together or not, we are very present to one another. In these digital times, that is rare. That is such a blessing.

Almost thirty years of reading and friendship. Most of us gathered again—women who have witnessed each other’s becoming across decades of joy and sorrow. Our books were recorded in the journal, but it was our lives we read most deeply. Injury, loss, children, grandchildren, weddings, funerals, forgiveness, faith—we opened these chapters with wine and wonder. We are no longer young, age is having its way with each of us, but we are still richly alive. The Spirit moved among us not with tongues of flame, but with fierce, faithful love. And laughter. So much laughter.

And at the other end of the continuum of my week, the dance recital.

My granddaughter stepped onto the stage in everything that said she was ready to fly. Her dances were bursts of energy, athletic, and sassy! Bursting in the celebration of all that the young body can do. With gymnastic flips, lunges, and high kicks, she moved through the music like someone on fire with joy. It was an acrobatic dance, yes—but more than that, it was a declaration: Look what I can do. Look how alive I am. My heart leap with her.

I watched these dancers through tears, stunned by the force of their presence. They pushed the limits of gravity and dared the world to cheer. My eyes glued to my granddaughter, I saw behind her boldness. I saw all the women she carries within her-her mother, grandmothers, great grandmothers, and those whose names are written only in our bones.

My own body is slow and stiff from gardening, a long car ride to the recital, and hours of theatre sitting. Yet, what life I still feel in my very cells to behold such youthful exuberance. Under the stage lights, across the dusty stage, in my presence to the present, I experienced emergence. I glimpsed the future. Maybe this is what the first Pentecost felt like.

Yesterday, in my garden, on the Eve of Pentecost, I noticed the peonies.

Still in bud, but swollen now—on the brink of bursting. Their globus heads trembled with imminent bloom, full of colour and fragrance not yet revealed. They stood, like the whole earth, poised and waiting. If the dancers I watched today, have a say, the future looks promising.

Pentecost. 50 days after Easter. One month after Pope Leo’s installation. Red robes and tongues of fire.

For me, Pentecost began Saturday evening, at Vigil Mass. After the book club and before the dance recital. My gaggle of crones remembered, and the little girls flying across the stage anticipated. Decades stretching between the past and the future.

At the Pentecost Mass, I watched a beloved parishioner—frail, hunched, her movements halting and oh, so fragile. She is my age. The tumour in her brain is inoperable, her body is slowly surrendering. Yet there she was, present. Struggling to stand and kneel, gripping the pew, her husband always beside her, holding space with silent devotion. Her suffering was etched into every movement, but so too was her faith. She came—not because it was easy, but because it was essential.

My heart broke open. Again.

This too is my body. This too is my blood.

She could have stayed home.
But she came.
To pray.
To receive.
To offer herself in that great mystery of suffering and surrender.

I whispered a prayer from where I sat, at the Book Club table, on my garden bench, in the pew, in my theatre seat,

Come, Holy Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.
Renew her courage. And mine.
Renew his strength. And ours.
Renew our aching hope. This soul weary world so needs your fire.

This year, Pentecost didn’t arrive with spectacle or thunder.
It arrived in human encounters—

In the analytical chair where stories resound like sacred echoes.
In the arms of women who know my whole story and still love me.
In my granddaughter’s dazzling flips across a stage.
In the trembling knees of a woman who won’t stop kneeling.
In the garden, where the peonies are still waiting-
but so close to bloom you can almost hear them sigh.

The Gifts of the Spirit come not only as tongues of fire, but also as fierce tenderness.
Not only as ecstatic speech, but also as quiet presence.

Wisdom. Fortitude. Understanding. Awe.
Not only bestowed from above,
but also drawn forth from below-
from the soil of our lives, from the ache of devotion, from the discipline of practice.

Spirit arrives as the breath between dance and prayer and laughter and tears.

These are the pages of our lives. Telling our story. Leaning toward- The End.

This Pentecost, I did not hear rushing wind.
But I felt it—
in the breath of the garden,
in the body in motion,
in a hand held steady beside a trembling one.

"Vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit"

Bidden or not, God is present-
carried in our aging bodies heavy with storied wisdom,
blooming in our youthful bodies at the edge of becoming,
waiting for us to say yes.

To it all!