Thank you for joining us!
Before we begin our devotional, I wanted to share a Comment Highlight from last week:
On our personal essay last week, where I shared some honesty about the recent changes in my life and writing career,
commented:The providence, the provide-nce, of Pentecost indeed seems uncoincidental. I work in healthcare, and up and quit a facility just before Christmas, nearly 10 years ago. It wasn't a safe move, but more of a mental health move. I found an employer AND community, (and providence!) Pentecost, waiting. . .for power, for direction. You're in the perfect spot.
This was such a comfort to read,
! Thank you for sharing it! writes a newsletter here on Substack where they post vividly-written, memoir-esque recollections and musings. Check it out!If you want a chance to be featured in next week’s Comment Highlight, all you have to do is post a comment on any of this week’s posts or threads. That’s it!
Now, on with this week’s devotional…
Typically on a Monday I share a devotional with you all, based on a poem I’ve written. Today, I’ve got two poems.
It’s Memorial Day in the United States, where we honor fallen soldiers and their families. And it’s also the Monday after Pentecost Sunday, or Whitsun, when we remember the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus’ disciples after He had returned to Heaven. A potent day, no matter if you have a fallen soldier in your family or not.
In my heart, I call May the month of holy fire. Even in years when Pentecost doesn’t fall within it, May feels like a quickening, a burst of inspiration. The plants grow tall under May’s gentle sun and warm rain. The birds and beasts make their nests and sing their lovesongs. Pentecost is everywhere, the Spirit descending to lift us up with the rising green.
And death? Death is here, also. The old growth of winter is decaying, sacrificial, so that the new can thrive. Brown grass becomes nesting material to hold tiny eggs and cushion tiny paws. The seed lies inert until it sprouts. The dirt seems dead until it’s covered in green.
Today—this week—we honor the dead, but we also wait for the Spirit to turn death into life. A sacred paradox. A mystery deeper than any other. A holy fire that creates life, instead of destroying it. Scarlet poppies standing tall, a burning bush.
I wrote the following two poems last year. The first for Pentecost, and the second for Memorial Day. May they lead us all into a week of remembering, and leave us ready for the spilling of the Spirit upon the soil of our souls.
The Fiftieth Day - a poem for Pentecost
on the fiftieth day the Spirit took wing and dropped a glass of flame where it shattered, spread sweet perfume and light over the faces looking up; look! look there, at the wings! each face illuminated each eye aglow the air filled with stories and fluttering wingbeats and flickering flame they looked up to watch the Spirit as She passed; turning the silent and the fearful and the broken and the grieving into storytellers.
In Memoriam - a poem for Memorial Day
this poppy was planted long before my time, long before I ever knew this house or this yard existed; and yet each year she rises in a crown of serrated green and sends up blooms of mayfire-flame in some ancient echo of a stilled battlefield, her brethren dotted over barbed-wire hillsides and graveyards of broken guns; in the birdsong quiet of our yard in May, her petals stir in the breeze, just as the petals of her ancestors stirred with the passage of silent uniformed ghosts; her blood-red fluttering a banner, a battle-cry, a yearning for peace, and a blessing on the peaceful; each year I ask her, how could you possibly remember? and each year she replies: how could I possibly forget?
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These two poems are incredibly beautiful and may have brought tears to my eyes. They gripped and tugged some part deep inside and mixed feelings of being blessed with grief for hearts who stopped somewhere far away in place or time. Together they are a whisper to action. A gentle reminder of the freedom we have and the gifts we are given. A nudge to use them to the best of our power. Thank you for sharing these.
Thanks for your kind words, S.E.
I will look at Pentecost in a new way. Those last lines. . .I feel we all are getting a fresh boost!
And the second reminds me of Gettysburg. You honored both.