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Theology is more like poetry than geometry. Theology is "vile for the sake of the gospel" (so says my friend, John Wesley). Aspiring to a vile poetics.

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Gifts for Pentecost

Come, Holy Spirit

Beth Felker Jones

May 29, 2023

Gentle reader,

I pray that the Spirit filled grace of Pentecost is being made known to you today.

Today’s post is brief; I have two Pentecost gifts for you, from Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) and Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004), separated by centuries, united by the same Spirit.

Leaf Excised from a Psalter: The Pentecost, c. 1260, Flanders, tempera and burnished gold on vellum.

Antiphon for the Holy Spirit

By Hildegard of Bingen
Translated by Barbara Newman

The Spirit of God
is a life that bestows life,
root of world-tree
and wind in its boughs.

Scrubbing out sin,
she rubs oil into wounds.

She is glistening life
alluring all praise,
all-awakening,
all-resurrecting.
 
Hildegard of Bingen , "Antophon for the Holy Spirit" from Symphonia: A Critical Edition of the “Symphonia Armonie Celestium Revelationum,” Second Edition, translated by Barbara Newman. Copyright © 1988, 1998 by Cornell University.

Veni Creator

By Czeslaw Milosz
Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Pinsky

Come, Holy Spirit,   
bending or not bending the grasses,   
appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame,   
at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards or when snow   
covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada.   
I am only a man: I need visible signs.   
I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction.   
Many a time I asked, you know it well, that the statue in church   
lifts its hand, only once, just once, for me.   
But I understand that signs must be human,   
therefore call one man, anywhere on earth,   
not me—after all I have some decency—   
and allow me, when I look at him, to marvel at you.   

Berkely, 1961

Twelve poems from The Collected Poems 1931-1987 by Czeslaw Milosz. Copyright © 1988 by Czeslaw Milosz

Let us pray:

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful
and kindle in them the fire of your love.

Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created,
and you shall renew the face of the earth.

Grace & peace,

BFJ

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