We have a prayer ministry at the Bridge. (I think every faith community should have a prayer ministry, where people can come together, share their burdens, requests, and celebrations, and then take them to the feet of Jesus together. So we do.) We’ve also added a short time before that to discuss what we’re reading in the Bible and/or other questions we might have about our faith. It’s a safe place to be vulnerable and explore. I sometimes picture us in the 1st century receiving letters from apostles, reading and wrestling with these new mind-blowing concepts in someone’s living room. And I usually take my shoes off, because we’re on holy ground (in a holy space, a holy posture).

This week, the conversation centered around the Holy Spirit, the Third Member of the Trinity Who receives relatively little mention in our lives. Maybe that’s because we’re confused about His/Her (often, The Spirit is given feminine characteristics and imagery) role, or that we’re simply used to using the Names of The Father, God, and The Son, Jesus the Christ. It probably doesn’t matter why or even if we use the Spirit specifically, as long as we recognize & acknowledge Her* enormous impact on our lives, impossible to understate.

(*or His, if you prefer – sometimes the words we use can be a huge obstacle, due to any and all sorts of human baggage. In that case, change the words. I’m certainly not interested in keeping obstacles. However, we must never abandon the principle and certainly not The Person based solely on an traumatic experience and negative semantic connotation.)

We are blind and The Spirit opens our eyes, deaf and The Spirit opens our ears, breaks our heart and heals it. When Jesus ascended, He left the Advocate/Counselor/Helper/Holy Spirit in us as a constant Divine presence. The prompts we receive to call that person or do that thing or whatever, that may be the Spirit leading us. The songs on the radio that connect to the passages we read earlier that “happen to” connect to a decision in our lives, there’s a great chance that’s The Spirit, too. Maybe you hear Her as an audible voice or a subtle nudge or a whisper or a shove, the way She moves is as different for each of us as it is for us at different days, times, situations in our own lives.

So, when I see the hosting site’s prompt today, “Scour the news for an entirely uninteresting story. Consider how it connects to your life. Write about that,” I can’t help but to see an obvious (though likely unintended) parallel. The uninteresting story, about other people doing other things in other places, does connect, we just can’t always see it. The prompt slows us down, asks us to focus, breathe, and look for connections. That the other places aren’t as “other” as we initially think, the other people definitely not “other” at all. What could possibly be unrelated or uninteresting?

I’ve heard this sort of exercise called “tying the clouds together,” and it absolutely isn’t something we do by ourselves. On our own, we divide and categorize, we look for trivial criteria to evaluate & compare. We fight and de-humanize. If (and when) we hear The Spirit, we can erase all of those walls, hope to forgive, and begin to love each other. Connection instead of separation, peace instead of war, kindness instead of violence, enough instead of more, you/we instead of me – these are all the work of The Spirit.

I don’t care too much about the story we find when we “scour the news,” but I care A LOT about the connection, and I’m pretty sure that’s the work of The Spirit, too.