The Painted Prayerbook

Image: Pentecost Fire © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Book of Acts, Day of Pentecost: Acts 2.1-21

Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them,
and a tongue rested on each of them.
All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit
and began to speak in other languages,
as the Spirit gave them ability.
—Acts 2.3-4

If we didn’t know it before, we surely know it now, as the second chapter of Acts unfolds: this is no tame God who comes to us, no safe and predictable deity. This is the God whose loving sometimes takes the form of scorching.

Before he left, Jesus told his friends he would send them the Advocate, the Comforter. Now we see this Comforter coming as wind, as flame, reminding us that comfort is not always comfortable, for it makes itself known in community, where we find the most searing challenges—and the deepest blessings—we will ever know.

This Grace That Scorches Us
A Blessing for Pentecost Day

Here’s one thing
you must understand
about this blessing:
it is not
for you alone.

It is stubborn
about this.
Do not even try
to lay hold of it
if you are by yourself,
thinking you can carry it
on your own.

To bear this blessing,
you must first take yourself
to a place where everyone
does not look like you
or think like you,
a place where they do not
believe precisely as you believe,
where their thoughts
and ideas and gestures
are not exact echoes
of your own.

Bring your sorrow.
Bring your grief.
Bring your fear.
Bring your weariness,
your pain,
your disgust at how broken
the world is,
how fractured,
how fragmented
by its fighting,
its wars,
its hungers,
its penchant for power,
its ceaseless repetition
of the history it refuses
to rise above.

I will not tell you
this blessing will fix all that.

But in the place
where you have gathered,
wait.
Watch.
Listen.
Lay aside your inability
to be surprised,
your resistance to what you
do not understand.

See then whether this blessing
turns to flame on your tongue,
sets you to speaking
what you cannot fathom

or opens your ear
to a language
beyond your imagining
that comes as a knowing
in your bones,
a clarity
in your heart
that tells you

this is the reason
we were made:
for this ache
that finally opens us,

for this struggle,
this grace
that scorches us
toward one another
and into
the blazing day.

—Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons

For previous reflections, blessings, and art for Pentecost, click the images or titles below:

Pentecost: When We Breathe Together

Pentecost: The Origin of Fire

Pentecost: One Searing Word

Pentecost: Fire and Breath

Using Jan’s artwork…
To use the image “Pentecost Fire,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Using Jan’s words…
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Image: Poured Into Our Hearts © Jan L. Richardson

Reading from the Epistles, Trinity Sunday, Year C: Romans 5.1-5

And hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love
has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit
that has been given to us.
–Romans 5.5

“So what do you think about the Trinity?” I ask Gary as we drive to the airport, where he will board a plane bound for Virginia to spend the next few days doing concerts there. As we talk, I find myself thinking about how, in the main, I approach the Trinity not so much as something to be grasped intellectually but as something that wants experiencing, that manifests itself in the dynamism of the relationships that exist within it and flow out from it. I am intrigued by how the Trinity continually lives in the tension between concealing and revealing. Enfolding itself in mystery and eluding our attempts to define it, the Trinity also reaches out to make itself known to us, to engage us in the intertwining relationship that dwells at its heart.

I suspect that God takes delight in our desire to know, to understand, to articulate—to “eff the ineffable,” as my Franciscan friend Father Robert says. Yet the real gift of Trinity Sunday may lie in how it invites us to acknowledge the mystery in which the Trinity lives, and to open ourselves to the love that is the nature and essence of the Trinity—the love that imbues and defines every action and aspect of the Divine, which Paul evokes so beautifully in the Epistle reading for this day.

Even as we stretch our minds in our continual quest to know, to glimpse, to perceive, how will we also open our hearts to the love that is the Trinity’s ultimate gift to us?

Poured Into Our Hearts
A Blessing for Trinity Sunday

Like a cup
like a chalice
like a basin
like a bowl

when the Spirit comes
let it find our heart
like this

shaped like something
that knows how to receive
what is given

that knows how to hold
what comes to fill

that knows how to gather itself
around what arrives as
unbidden
unsought
unmeasured
love.

For previous reflections on Trinity Sunday, click the images or titles below.

Trinity Sunday: Drenched in the Mystery

Trinity Sunday: A Spiral-Shaped God

Trinity Sunday: Blessing of the Ordinary
(includes “Blessing the Ordinary”)

Using Jan’s artwork…
To use the image “Poured Into Our Hearts,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Image: Tongues as of Fire © Jan L. Richardson

Reading from the Book of Acts, Day of Pentecost: Acts 2.1-21

When We Breathe Together
A Blessing for Pentecost Day

This is the blessing
we cannot speak
by ourselves.

This is the blessing
we cannot summon
by our own devices,
cannot shape
to our purpose,
cannot bend
to our will.

This is the blessing
that comes
when we leave behind
our aloneness
when we gather
together
when we turn
toward one another.

This is the blessing
that blazes among us
when we speak
the words
strange to our ears

when we finally listen
into the chaos

when we breathe together
at last.

P.S. For previous reflections on Pentecost, click the images or titles below.

Pentecost: The Origin of Fire

Pentecost: One Searing Word
(includes “Pentecost Blessing”)

Pentecost: Fire and Breath

[To use the image “Tongues as of Fire,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]