Gentle Spirit

I thought we should mark Pentecost this year at St Catherine's by making sure I offered everyone the opportunity to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

It seemed seasonal.

So I did it in a good Anglican way. "If you want to be filled with the Spirit, bring your communion booklet with you up to the rail as you come to communion & we will pray a special blessing over you" (- for those of you who realise what I'm up to, you'll see that I'm planning to call down the Holy Spirit and lay hands on anything that moves at this point -) "before giving you the bread and wine."

The only flaw in my plan was this: when you ask if people are hungry, and they are, they all want to be fed. And feeding takes a while.

I mean, they all want to be fed.

Well, at 8am perhaps only two thirds. And at 11am only three quarters. And at 6pm we did it differently, cos there was no communion, so I gave them no option, and called down the Spirit on the whole gathering.

But a small part of my tiny brain was blown when we had 100% take up at the Mothers Union service on Wednesday morning. One of them took hold of my arm afterwards and said: "It worked! I felt the tingle!" Not the deepest theology of the Spirit you'll ever hear, but THIS IS THE MOTHERS UNION being filled with the Holy Spirit.

Glory.

Another, rather middle-of-the-road member of the 11am crowd came up to me mid week and said, "That was a wonderful service on Sunday morning." And I am thinking to myself of how we have changed the service since I first came: she is one of the very few still standing from those days (others have migrated to midweek cos of buses, or have moved away, or have passed on; a very few have stopped coming). In the old days there was old-style language, plainsong chanting, chanted psalms, organ only, full robed choir, the vicar robed too. Last Sunday we had a relaxed communion, with bits of modern language liturgy, me in a suit & my fellow clergy (Gill) rather less formally dressed than me, music from our music group, a mixture of worship songs and hymns (from 'Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord' to 'Come Down O Love Divine') and prayer for the Holy Spirit - yet the comment came back from this person, "That was a wonderful service."

It was! But she meant - God touched her.

So it really was wonderful.

The photo is of our Easter Congregational Meeting: time to look back at all God has done over the year behind, and to look forward to all he is about to do. My prayer is - More Lord. Please! More of you in this place.