A few years ago, during Holy Week, I had the following dream: I am on a large ferry boat, trying to get somewhere. I don’t know where. Someone says, “It’s just a wild goose chase.” Then, someone says there is a bear on the ship. Everyone is afraid. I go to find it, and someone says, “It’s just a wild goose chase.” I find the bear, and it has a wound on one of its paws that is raw and looks painful. I take some salve out of my pocket and slowly move toward it, talking gently, telling the bear that I want to help. I feel scared. The bear growls but finally lets me approach. I put salve on its paw. The bear jumps into the water and swims away. Someone says, “It’s just a wild goose chase.” The dream ends.

The current use of the idiom, ‘a wild goose chase’, implies a fruitless undertaking, or searching for something that is simply impossible to find. This was how the people in my dream were using it. But there is a deeper, more archetypal, and spiritual meaning in that phrase. The Celtic Christians of the British Isles during the Middle Ages referred to the Holy Spirit, not as a dove, but as a wild goose. To me,this is a great image.
It speaks of a God who refuses to be domesticated, a God who, as C.S. Lewis described Aslan, the lion in
the Narnia books, a Christ icon, as “good but not safe.” Geese also played a role in the life of Saint Martin of Tours. The people of Tours, France wanted Martin to become their bishop. He had no desire to do so and hid in a barn to avoid the ceremony, but the loud honking of the geese in his hiding place gave him away.
So, a disheveled and feather-covered Martin was then led to the church and anointed as bishop.

This wild goose metaphor also reminds me of an image Jesus used, as described in the
Gospel of John. He said, “The Spirit is like the wind that blows wherever it wants to. You
can hear the wind, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going” (3:8).
Perhaps Jesus was recalling the beginning of Genesis in which the Spirit of God, like a
wild wind swept over the chaotic waters.

We all have experiences of the wildness in the natural world: the waves crashing on the
rocky shore of Lake Superior or an ocean shoreline, a thunderstorm with rain and wind
bending the trees, or the wild forest fires burning up north. We can also recall our own
experiences of wild emotions and perhaps some wild behavior in our youth.
This Pentecost, I want to affirm the wildness of life and acknowledge the wildness of
God. Pentecost declares that our Wild Goose God never tires of chasing us and steering
us toward the fullness of life. At the home of famous Psychologist Carl Jung, there is a
plaque above the front door: Vocatus atque non vocatus, deus aderit. Bidden or not
bidden, God is present.

Jesus spoke of sending us “The Spirit of truth.” The Greek word for truth literally means
“unhiddenness”. When I think of the times the Spirit has rushed like the wind into my
life, it has not been particularly gentle or dove-like. A wild goose is more like it: confusion, anxiety, even pain, and my own flapping of wings and honking in protest. But, eventually, I experienced the mysterious space and peace that came from this “unhiddenness.” Pentecost is a time to be open to a new sweeping of the divine winds, bringing deep truths that summon us to new aspects of life.

Let us pray with Celtic Christian teacher J. Philip Newell:
“In whirling elemental winds, in the impenetrable mists of dark clouds, in the wild gusts
of lashing rain, in the ageless rocks and seas, you are God, and we bless you.
For your untamed creativity, your boundless mystery, and your passionate yearnings,
planted deep in the soul of every human being, we give you thanks. Grant us the grace to
reclaim these depths, to uncover this treasure, to liberate these longings, and in being set
free in our own spirits, to act for the well-being of the world. And assure us again that in
becoming like you, we come closer to our true selves, made in the image of outpouring
love, born of the free eternal Wind.” Amen.

Spring and Easter celebrate the way life breaks through: Chicks break out of eggs, plants break forth from the ground, leaves and flowers burst forth from buds, and, for us Christians, Jesus rises from the tomb.

 American theologian Sallie McFague has written a book called Body of God based on this idea. She proposes that the Universe is the physical embodiment of God and gives this as the prime reason why we should treat the natural world with reverence. In the most ordinary of earthly circumstances, when we least expect it, the power of God, the power to bring forth life from death, breaks through because creation and resurrection are intimately intertwined. 

The normal development of any organism depends on the routine death and elimination of large numbers of cells through a process called apoptosis. This means that the death of individual cells is a fundamental part of development in all complex forms of life, including us humans. A  similar process takes place on the emotional and soul levels. The Death and Resurrection of Jesus, becomes a symbol of the transformative grace of God working in the “apoptosis” of all life. The Paschal Mystery is not only something that Jesus went through, that we read about on Easter Sunday. We are all somehow plunged into the Paschal Mystery ourselves. 

Sr. Joan Chittister wrote, “The resurrection of Jesus is about our coming to grips with the transformed and transforming presence of Christ then, now, and always... and lies not in the transformation of Jesus, but in the transformation awaiting us. Resurrection is change at the root of the soul. It marks a whole new way of being in life.”

Psychologist Abraham Maslow talked about his own death and resurrection experience in an interview with Psychology Today. He said,“After my heart attack, my attitude toward life changed. One very important aspect of the postmortem life is that everything gets double precious and gets piercingly important. You get stabbed by things, by flowers, and by babies and by beautiful things - the very act of living, of walking and breathing and eating and having friends and chatting.  Everything seems to look more beautiful rather than less, and one gets the much-intensified sense of miracles.” 
Transformation doesn’t always come quickly after a dramatic experience, as it did for Dr. Maslow. Sr Joyce Rupp wrote, “Eastering isn’t always a quick step out of the tomb. Sometimes, rising from the dead takes a long, slowly-greening time. It can’t be hurried. It may be a painstakingly slow process, a tiny bit of life gradually weaving through one’s pain and questions.” 
Jesus’ disciple, John the Beloved, wrote, “My dear people, we are already the children of God. But what we are in the future is not yet fully revealed. All we know is that we shall all be like him” (1 John 3:2). How do we become aware of this divine presence in our lives in a real way? Celtic Christianity’s wisdom teaches that we do this by seeing the divine in the natural world, in each other, and in ourselves. My hope for all of us is that we someday will be able to join with St. Catherine of Genoa, who shouted as she ran through the streets of the city one day, “My deepest me is God! My deepest me is God!” 

May the celebration of the Resurrection help us to remember that things are breaking through and proclaim: Christ is risen!                                            
The Spirit of God lives in me!                                   
 Life is very good!                                             
It is, indeed, a Happy Easter!

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The Christian tradition in Central and Eastern Europe is to ring the church bells at dusk on All Souls’ Eve. Families go to cemeteries bringing bright yellow and orange chrysanthemums and lighting yellow, or orange votive candles to decorate the graves of their beloved departed. Liturgical services are held at the cemetery or at the local church. Families make cookies or pastries to take to the church services to share with the other attendees. According to Eastern Orthodox tradition, the souls of the departed come back on this day and stand at their own gravesites or outside their homes. For this reason, relatives set chairs and food near the home fireplace and set sweets on the hearth. Family members also light candles or lanterns to illuminate the departed’s road to help them find their way back to the Light of Heaven.

All Souls Day also reminds us of our own mortality. For most of us, the night is a time for sleeping. Sleep is a funny thing. On the one hand, it is a functional process. In sleep we process the day’s events, ordering and collating the day’s data. On the other hand, sleep is the “little death”, a rehearsal for that last journey into the great mystery.

I was thinking about this as I went to bed last night and lay there in the dark, hoping my thoughts wouldn’t keep me awake. While we sleep, others are at work, and nocturnal creatures hunt and feed. The raccoons who live near our house, work hard to figure out how to get into our bird feeder again. The night is also the time of dreaming. Whether we remember our dreams or not, we usually spend two to three hours of the night dreaming. Spiritually, while we dream, or during those hypnagogic (half-asleep/half-awake) times, the veil between worlds is thin. According to the Book of Job, “In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on people, as they slumber in their beds, God may speak in their ears” (33:15). Songwriters Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher recognized this when they wrote the lyrics for their song, Rainbow Connection: “Have you been half asleep And have you heard voices? I’ve heard them calling my name… I’ve heard it too many times to ignore it: It’s something that I’m supposed to be.”

Perhaps, after all, there isn’t that much difference between sleep and death. Sleep doesn’t frighten us because we trust that we will wake up in the morning, and life will continue as always. But what about death? I suspect that death is a lot like going to sleep and waking up in a new place with our relatives and ancestors who live there. In the Gospel of Thomas, the disciples ask Jesus, “When will the dead find their place again in unity with God, and when will the new world come? Jesus said to them, ‘What you look forward to has already come, but you do not recognize it” (Saying 51).
I want to close with an excerpt from Holidays and Holy Nights by Christopher Hill:
“Savor the word fall. At this time, we watch the fall of the reign of summer, a great triumph moves deep into a darkness full of danger, promise, and mystery. We pass through a wild night of apparitions into a quiet that grows deeper until it is infused with the lights of candles and stars. Time narrows down until it comes to its turning point, as all creation holds its breath in the silent night and waits for the entry of something new and unimaginable.”
May The Holy One open our eyes, so that we may recognize that death, is an entry into something new and unimaginable in our place in Sacred Unity.

Early this morning, as I looked out my home office window, I could see that big ball of fire we call the Sun just clearing the trees toward the East. I started to think about how the Holy One appears again and again in Biblical stories as fire. In the Book of Exodus, Moses encounters the Holy One in a burning bush. In the Acts of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit appears as a flame that divides and comes to rest above the heads of the disciples. These are the two most familiar examples, but there are many other stories of the Divine appearing as fire in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the scriptures of other religions. 

Recording one of her visions, the twelfth-century saint and mystic, Hildegard of Bingen, wrote down what she heard: “I, the Highest and Fiery Power, have kindled every spark of life. I, the fiery life of Divine Essence, am aflame beyond the beauty of the meadows, I gleam in the waters, and I burn in the sun, moon, and stars… I remain hidden in every kind of reality as a fiery power” (Vision 1.2). 

The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning had a similar revelation which she shared in her epic poem, Aurora Leigh: “Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God: But only he who sees takes off his shoes.”
 
This “fire” is also a part of us. In The Book of Proverbs, it is written that “The soul of the human being is the flame of God” (20:27). Helen Keller recognized this. Perhaps she was more attuned to her inner senses because her outer senses of seeing and hearing were absent. She wrote in her book My Religion, “I feel the flame of eternity in my soul.”

I find it fascinating that this same idea harmonizes across cultures and religions. In Chinese philosophy, Shen extends itself through all that exists. The word Shen can be translated in many ways such as “spirit”, “soul”, “God”, and “numinous”. Shen is associated with fire and resides in the heart. Saint Paul also tells us that God’s Spirit resides in our hearts, and advised the fledgling Christian community, “Never let the fire in your heart go out. Keep it alive” (Romans 12:11). So, what can we do to keep the divine flame alive in our hearts? One way is through meditation. If you are an early riser, I suggest facing the rising sun and beginning your meditation with a prayer. This one from the Celtic Christian tradition is one of my favorites:
At the rising of Your sun Lord God, Creator of light,
At the rising of Your sun each morning, let the greatest of all lights, Your love,
rise, like the sun, within my heart. 
Then just sit or stand quietly and breathe into your belly. Let the sunlight remind you of the Divine light in your heart and ask this light to lead you throughout the day. Jesus said that we are to allow the light of this flame to shine forth. (Matthew 5:14-16), so send your light out to those who need healing in the world. My Quaker friend likes to say, “I will hold you in the Light.” 
End your meditation with a prayer. I like this one:
May the light of God illuminate the heart of our souls.                               
May the flame of Christ kindle in us, love.                                            
May the fire of the Spirit free us to live fully, this day and forever. 
Amen.
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I grew up in the South and when someone was surprised by something they heard, they would often say, “As I live and breathe!” We are entering the season of Pentecost and it is the beginning of something surprising happening. On Pentecost Sunday we hear the story of the disciples of Jesus gathering together to celebrate Shavout, the Jewish festival of the giving of the law to Moses on Mount Sinai, when “Suddenly, there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting” (Acts 2:2). In the Jewish Scriptures, the Hebrew word used for spirit is ruach. In the creation story, “The earth was chaos, darkness was on the surface of the deep, and the Ruach Elohim (Spirit of God) was hovering upon the surface of the water” (Genesis 1:2).

Besides spirit, ruach can mean wind, breath or life force. This gives us an image of the Spirit all around us and within us. In the creation story, it is this same Ruach Elohim that entered into the first humans and gave them life. We read, “And the Lord God formed the human and breathed into its nostrils the breath of life; and the human became a living soul.” We take for granted the miracle of breath that fills our lungs, and keeps our heart, mind, and entire body functioning from our first moment of life until our breath leaves us at our death.

This more expansive image of spirit and breath is not limited to Judaism and Christianity. Indeed, it is found in traditions all over the world. According to Navajo tradition, the Winds first appeared from the horizons of the four cardinal directions, and these Winds come to each child at the moment of birth, giving life. Soon after their birth, Navajo babies are presented to the four Winds by their parents to give thanks, symbolically reminding them that the life and breath that sustains them is the same life and breath that is the Holy Wind energizing the entire cosmos. The people of New Zealand and Hawaii, greet each other by touching foreheads and noses in a symbolic sharing of breath and life force they call ha. When Hawaiians greet each other saying aloha, they are sharing love, affection, peace, and the Spirit of Life that holds everything together.

The ancient Celts used the word awen. This word is formed by combining the two words, aw, meaning fluid or flowing, and en, meaning essence, inspiration and spirit. So awen literally means flowing spirit. Awen was adopted by early Celtic Christians to describe the role of the Holy Spirit. Like the Navajo Holy Wind, Awen is Divine Energy that surrounds and fills us with every breath, inspiring our minds and souls. With each breath we take, we are breathing in the Spirit of God, the breath that has given life across the ages on this earth. How much richer our lives might be if only we were conscious of our breathing God in and out with each breath. This poem by Rumi invites us to experience this Spirit:

Right now, feel the breeze
from the spiritual north of the divine life.
The air is becoming fresher,
like the purity we face at dawn
when the gentle wind blows.
So let the breezes of the divine breath
polish your heart.
Every sadness will lift.
In the pause where your breath stops,
just for an instant,
you may just dissolve into Holy Spirit.

When we are asleep and dreaming, we are unaware that we are dreaming, and whatever is happening in our dream seems very real. We do not realize or recognize that what is happening in our dream is a creation of our individual and collective unconscious, and therefore we are unable to change it. But occasionally, we experience what is called a lucid dream and are aware that we are indeed dreaming. When this happens, we are no longer inexorably trapped in whatever happens - we can change our dream - even break the laws of physics in our dream world. For example, we can fly or have magical powers. 
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What if our awake state is similar? What if there can be “lucid” times when we realize that there is more to what seems real than that which appears to our senses. What if the laws of physics are not fixed once we realize this? Is this what the Buddha meant when he said he was awake? Is this what the Celtic Christians meant when they taught that Jesus was the one who remembers and was here to teach us to remember? What if we are more than we can normally see, feel, and do in our awake world?

In the gospel story of the transfiguration, Jesus’ disciples, Peter, James and John see Jesus “transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light” (Matt 17:2). The usual interpretation of this story is that Jesus was manifesting his divinity, but what if the story is really about Peter, James and John experiencing a moment of being “awake”? Jesus wasn’t the only person who was seen as radiating with light in sacred scriptures. When Moses returned from his encounter with the Holy One on Mount Horeb, the Jewish scriptures say: “His face shone brightly” (Exodus 34:29-30). But this is not just a phenomenon  written about in religious scriptures. In the late 18th century, a Russian attorney, Nicholas Motovilov wrote about his encounter with Russian Orthodox priest and teacher Seraphim of Sarov as follows:

“Fr. Seraphim was sitting across from me, teaching about the Holy Spirit. I asked him: ”Father, how can I know if the Spirit is with me or not?” The elder took me firmly by the shoulders and said, "We are both now, my dear fellow,  in the Holy Spirit." It was as if my eyes had been opened, for I saw that the face of the priest was brighter than the sun. In my heart I felt joy and peace and in my body, a warmth, and a fragrance began to spread around us. But I was also terrified by the fact that his face shone like the sun.”

So, it seems as though other holy people also can be seen as shining like the sun. But wait, there’s more, as the infomercials say. Motovilov continues his account: “So Holy Seraphim said to me, "Do not fear, dear fellow. You would not be able to see me this way if you yourself were not shining in the fullness of the Holy Spirit.” The monk and author Thomas Merton, wrote about an experience he had in the center of the shopping district in Louisville Kentucky. He reported that, “It was like waking from a dream of separateness into a special world.  And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.” We are ALL walking around shining like the sun. Who would have thought! There is a line in the beginning of John’s Gospel that usually gets overlooked. In fact, I’ve never heard a sermon preached about it. John wrote,“In him (referring to Jesus) was life, and that life was the light of all people” (John 1: 4-5). Again we hear, “The light of ALL people.” Even Yoda, in Star Wars, told Luke, “Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.” 

Now biology agrees that we are luminous beings. Scientists have demonstrated that every cell in our body emits light. These light emissions, which are not only emitted by humans but by all living things, are called biophotons. Studies have also found that only living things emit light. You can learn more about this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA5TYZ1g1zQ

Why don’t we always see this light in ourselves or in others that the disciples, the Israelites, Motovilov, and Thomas Merton saw? From a purely scientific point of view, our eyes can’t usually see light in the spectrum in which these biophotons appear. But what if there is more to it from a spiritual or metaphysical view? What if it is because our waking life is like a dream and we are not lucid, or awake enough to see this light? After his enlightenment, it is said that the Buddha passed a man on the road who was struck by the Buddha’s extraordinary radiance and peaceful presence. The man stopped and asked, “Are you a celestial being or a god?'  “No” said the Buddha. “Well, then, are you some kind of magician or wizard?” Again the Buddha answered, “No.” “Well, my friend, then what are you?” asked the man. The Buddha replied, “I am awake.” Perhaps St. Peter gives us a hint to this dilemma in one of his letters. He wrote, “Pay attention as to a light shining in a murky place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Maybe Peter is referring to the divine light that is already in us but is hidden in our murky places - in our psychic pain - by the business and distractions of everyday life - in our collective forgetting. Maybe that is why Jesus said, “I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see” (John 9:39).

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The realm of heaven is like a woman who left her car out in the sun with all the windows rolled up. When she returned to the car it was blistering hot inside. Everything in the car was too hot to touch. The air in the car was so hot that it was difficult to breathe and she began to sweat and was very uncomfortable. So immediately she rolled down all the windows and the cool breeze blew through the car. The air in the car immediately cooled down and it soon became easy to breathe. The air was no longer stale and hot. Instead is smelled of fresh mown grass and cooled her skin.
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I cannot help but see the Holy Spirit as an archetype. Archetypes are universal themes existing in what C.G. Jung called the collective unconscious. They are cross cultural, transhistorical, transreligious, and appear over and over again as characters in myths, fairy tales and stories all over the world. This does not mean the Holy Spirit is not a real and living presence, but that the archetype of Holy Spirit or Spirit of God holds deeper meanings than that which appear in Biblical stories. 

The first time we hear about the Spirit of God in the Jewish Scriptures is in the creation story of Genesis: “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” (Genesis 1:2) The Hebrew word for spirit is ruach, a feminine word meaning spirit, breath, wind, and life force. The word ruach, or its Greek equivalent, pneuma, appears over 800 times in the Bible. Jesus used this word, when he said, “The wind (ruach) blows where it wishes and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone born of the spirit.”(John 3:8) It was the ruach ha-kodesh (holy spirit) that blew like a mighty wind in the Pentecost story. 

According to the Navajo tradition, Wind appeared from the horizons of the four cardinal directions. Wind comes to each individual at the moment of birth and gives the child the vital breath of life. This archetypal idea is also expressed in the Jewish creation story: “And the Lord God formed the human . . . and breathed into its nostrils the breath of life; and the human became a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7)

Soon after their birth, Navajo babies are ceremoniously presented to the winds who reside in the north, south, east, and west, who give them a "little wind" which reminds them that the life and breath that sustains them is the same life and breath that that the wind that dwells within them is entwined with the Holy Wind that encompasses the cosmos. In China, this wind or life breath is called qi.  According to Zhuangzi, when a human is born, qi is gathered. When qi is gathered, life thrives. When qi is dispersed, life ends. 

The Breath of God, the Navajo Holy Wind, Qi, surrounds and fills us with every breath we take. For us humans, wind, and breath, and spirit are meteorological, biological, and theological. The story tellers of Genesis understood something that the yogis, Taoist sages, and Navaho have also been teaching since ancient times: that there is a difference between the air we breathe and the life giving principle contained within it. This inner breath also called qi, prana, holy wind, or energy runs through our body, mind and soul.

 In his Book of Secrets, Indian mystic Rajneesh Osho writes: “If you can do something with breath, you will attain the source of life. If you can do something with breath, you can transcend time and space. If you can do something with breath, you will be in the world and also beyond it. There are certain points in the breathing which you have never observed, and those points are the doors, the nearest doors to you, from where you can enter into a different world, into a different being, a different consciousness.”

When you go outside and feel the wind blow on your face, that is the Divine Wind reaching out to cool you, to touch you. How different our lives might be if we were conscious that we breathe in holy breath, that we share in the breath of one another, of trees and of animals, of all the people who have lived and that we are born of the Eternal Wind.
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