God's descending Spirit

When it captures us we are surprised, overtaken and overwhelmed

We have doves in our neighborhood. I've watched their descent. They don't flit about or zoom in for a landing. Instead, they spread their tail feathers in a wide fan and hover for an expectant moment before settling quietly onto a branch. A flock can descend on a tree without your knowing it.

Surely it wasn't the outline and color of a dove but this lightness-this expectant, hovering moment-that John the Baptist meant to convey when he spoke of the Spirit's descent onto Jesus as a dove from heaven (John 1:32-33).

Some of us want to see the Spirit as a dove, or perhaps a flame-like "tongue" above the disciples' heads, because as humans we are imagemakers. seeing, we suppose, is be lieving. Having seen a thing plainly, we feel we've gained a measure of control over it.

But no one can draw a picture of the Spirit. References to the Spirit in Scripture focus on symbolic images: water, light, breath, a dove and flames. Attempts to depict the Spirit in explicitly religious art tend to focus on these images. The more literal and exact such pictures are, they more they don't work.

Why do pictures of the Spirit miss the mark? Why can't they express the full sense of the Spirit's workings in our lives? Because we can't control the Spirit's movements. Time and again, God's Spirit resists the kind of management that we gain from words-about and pictures-of.

Spirit-captured

You can capture a dove. It will lie still if you hold it between your hands. But the Spirit captures you, at places and times and in ways of God's choosing. You can open yourself to the Spirit's movements, but you can't dictate or supervise them. The Spirit will surprise you, overtake you and sometimes overwhelm you.

Perhaps images of the Spirit in Scripture are meant as models for the way God's Spirit moves in our lives. The Spirit washes over us, enlightens us, breathes into our souls, descends without our bidding, sets us on fire.

And yet, throughout history and even prehistory, images have expressed the spiritual dimension of human existence with eloquence. I'm talking not only about painting and sculpture. Jeremiah's visions and the word-pictures of the Psalms are spiritual images. A Bach cantata or a simple hymn. Gothic cathedrals, the church of your childhood. Michelangelo's Pieta, Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night, Jackson Pollock's tangled interlace. One line in a poem that opens up your soul or a scene in a film that suddenly makes everything clear. The smile on a child's face. Jazz clarinetist Pete Fountain playing just a Closer Walk with Thee.

Worship often incorporates images that provide such moments of insight and inspiration. Take a moment to reflect on your worship memories. Words linger with us, to be sure. But for me it's mostly sights and sounds that endure over time. The warm sense of community in our summertime country church. The culmination of a Maundy Thursday communion-the stripping of the altar, worshipers leaving the church silently and in tears. A gospel revival in the basement of a center city Philadelphia church, clapping hands and rhythmic music rising in the humid air. Silent prayer in a white-washed chapel, diffused sunlight on the walls, the sound of my breathing, the presence of God. Hoarsely sung hymns at the bedside of my dying mother, her eyes and good hand moving upward whenever we sang a hymn of praise.

Images can express an experience that language can't capture: that intangible, indefinable moment when we encounter the Spirit. They do so in a way that is vast, encompassing all human experience, yet also personal as we privately listen to the Spirit's voice.

What should you do when an image strikes you, grabs you or just slows you down for a moment? When you feel a tightening in your chest, your eyes fill up or you recognize something you can't quite name?

Wait. Let it unfold. Take out a notebook and write down your reflections. What did you see? Hear? Taste? Touch? What lingers in your mind's eye? Write what occurs to you-interpretations will follow.

Perhaps your life moves at a pace that seldom allows for such moments. If so, find a way to allow some beauty back into your life with a hike in the woods, a symphony, dance, book of poetry, art exhibit or your own creative act. Sometimes an artwork that seems inscrutable has the greatest potential to reveal the Spirit's workings in your inner life. (Is that unrecognizable image art? Never mind; no one's asking you to decide. Wait. Take a breath, relax, let it exist in your presence.) This is a matter of allowing, not commanding or manipulating, the Spirit's movement.

Beauty is a beginning. Your encounter with the image may bring you to a moment, an attitude, a certain expectant quietness in which the Spirit can spread its tail feathers, hover and descend.

Stone is an artist and art educator, adjunct professor of art at the University of Texas, Arlington, and art specialist for the public schools in Fort Worth, Texas. She is the author of Image and Spirit: Finding Meaning in Visual Art (Augsburg Books, 2003; www.augsburgbooks.com; 800-328-4648). She is a member of St. Matthew (Fort Worth) and Jesse Lake (Talmoon, Minn.) Lutheran churches.

Copyright Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Jun 2004
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved