Image: What the Fire Gives
© Jan Richardson
Reading from the Book of Acts, Day of Pentecost: Acts 2:1-21
Pentecost arrives to remind us that ashes do not have the final word, and that fire does not come only to consume. It comes also to bless, to call, to inspire, to give to us what we could never begin to imagine on our own.
—Jan Richardson, from Pentecost: What the Fire Gives
The Painted Prayerbook
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On Ash Wednesday this year, as Lent began, I wrote about how I don’t want to romanticize the ashes that can come with devastation and destruction. Instead, I want to stay curious about what God can do with ashes and with dust, and to continue to discern the ways I can be part of what God might be creating anew.
I am thinking about this again as we approach the Day of Pentecost. We have traveled through many weeks since the beginning of Lent. This arc of time that began with ashes will end with fire, that vivid image and symbol of the Spirit that comes to Jesus’ followers in the wake of his physical departure. And where fire might rightly conjure images of more devastation and ashes, on this day, it comes instead with Spirit, with new life, with the miracle of speaking and understanding, and with a transforming call.
This day, and throughout the coming season, what word might this fire hold for us? What might we most need to speak, and where might we listen for a word that someone else needs to say?
As Pentecost arrives, this blessing is for you, with deep gratitude.
What the Fire Gives
A Blessing for Pentecost
You had thought that fire
only consumed,
only devoured,
only took for itself,
leaving merely ash
and memory
of something
you had believed,
if not permanent,
would be long enough,
enduring enough,
to be nearly
eternal.
So when you felt
the scorching on your lips,
the searing in your heart,
you could not
at first believe
that flame could be
so generous,
that when it came to you—
you, in your sackcloth
and sorrow—
it did not come
to consume,
to take still more
than everything.
What surprised you most
were not the syllables
that spilled from
your scalded,
astonished mouth—
though that was miracle
enough,
to have words
burn through
what had been numb,
to find your tongue
aflame with a language
you did not know
you knew—
no, what came
as greatest gift
was to be so heard
in the place
of your deepest
silence,
to be so seen
within the blazing,
to be met
with such completeness
by what the fire gives.
—Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons
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