bukas palad: May 2010

Springtime is fast coming to an end: the hotter afternoons promise the long-awaited summer warmth so many in Boston have longed for since winter. As I cycled along the Charles yesterday, I asked myself, how did I miss springtime?

I remember enjoying the warmth as the snow melted away and delighting in the green, green grass of our backyard peeping through. I recall seeing the first buds that dramatically burst forth into a myriad spectacle of kaleidoscopic blossoms at Easter. And I reminisce about people’s frosty pursed smiles in winter breaking into wide, happy grins with spring’s advent.

Often times, however, my spring days were spent in study or ministry. I was too preoccupied with these that I didn’t stop long enough to lift up my head to gaze on the subtle life-giving changes taking place around me. Truth be told, I didn’t relish the quiet springtime transformation well. Such is my regret.

The Apostle Paul wrote that we live and move and have our being in the Spirit. This Spirit is the faith of Jesus. His faith is characterized by his total self-giving love for God, whose goodness gives, and for neighbour, who is God’s desired recipient of his goodness. His is a faith springing forth from savouring God’s goodness fully; his lingering with people at table or in conversation illustrate this. And filled with glee, awe and thanksgiving, he shared this faith that it is very good that humankind and God are already in communion. At Pentecost, Jesus gifted his apostles with this Spirit of his faith.

We too are gifted with this Spirit. In this Spirit, we savour God’s goodness in the people, the moments and the realities in our lives. In this Spirit, we come to confess the undeniable truth: we are still God’s beloved even in our darkest trials and most shameful sins. And in this Spirit, we thank God for all we have, both blessed and challenging, by sharing his goodness with one and all. This is our Christian faith; it is Jesus’ faith. At Pentecost, the Church celebrates Jesus’ gift of the Spirit that invites us as a Christian community into the new springtime of living more fully like he did.

Today is Pentecost. Today, my prayer is to grow up more in the Spirit of the faith of Jesus with one and all.

Would this be your prayer too today?

photo: springtime tulips by adsj

What if hope is not someone who will come to lift us up, nor an event that promises to free us from a present ill? What if it is not that which lies outside, drawing our gaze towards it on that distant horizon with its faint but beckoning glint amidst the darkening blanket?

No. What if hope is really about what is inside each of us? That unexpected, quiet bubbling from within that ripples through a staid emptiness. Or, that oh, surprising shimmer of light that comes piercing into the black of despair, and then stays, illuminating it with an assuring luminosity. What if hope is that moment when the swirl of confusion suddenly raptures and the blue, blue sky light comes pouring in changing everything we assumed to be?

Perhaps, hope really lies so very, very close; not at all faraway but deep within us, always opening us up to the surprisingly new, the impossibly possible, the unbelievably believable.

If so, would this not be the work of God’s Spirit, that all certain hope within everyone of us?

photo: dome, rosary basilica in lourdes, france by adsj

bukas palad

with open hands, we give what we have first received. and with open hands, we receive what we will divest, once again. this is blessing itself: the giving and receiving of life and love, the sharing of faith and God.

A New Springtime

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Hope: a thought

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