by Christine Schenk, NCR
Pentecost is far and away my favorite feast in the liturgical year.
My first real sense of God’s Spirit came as a young child. On summer mornings, before anyone else awakened, I would steal outside to gaze in fascination as freshening breezes blew through the tall oak, elm and catalpa trees that lined our slumbering street.
I sensed a secret presence there for which I had no name. Something sacred, beautiful, and gloriously alive was at work in our world.
While I have occasionally wondered if this experience was a throwback to my archetypal German reverence for the sacredness of trees (!), I now intuit that something greater is afoot.
Something ineffable, gentle and completely beyond our control saturates all of creation — me, you, and all that is....