Towards the end of the day today I had a really nice feeling of God's love and peace. It came about after (and perhaps because of) a pastoral care situation. It had gone very well, and I felt good about my own ability to be responsive and tuned into the spiritual rhythms of the Universe and all that good stuff.
So I was sitting in the chapel listening to the second lesson of Evening Prayer (a healing story from Luke) and just came to moment where I felt exhilarated in my body and spirit. Hard to describe except to say that it was delicious and wonderful and peaceful and exciting all at the same time. I wondered whether I should just revel in that moment when the lesson ended, or whether I should continue to Office as normal. I decided that I should continue leading Evening Prayer--the insight to be had is that it would have selfish for me to stay in my own spiritual moment and abandon the congregation in silence. If the liturgy had set up the expectation of silence or contemplative shenanigans, I would have made a different choice.
In this liturgy is similar to meditation, where often one's commitment to the integrity of the exercise must supersede anything else, even if it seems to come from the spiritual realms. I think it was Thomas Keating who said somewhere that if it is the Holy Spirit, She will come back another time.
I referred to the Holy Spirit with a feminine pronoun the other day in the company of a person I had just met and she was delighted (my companion, I can't speak for the Spirit on this occasion). It's one of the options outlined by Elizabeth Johnson in She Who Is as way to have more correct language about God. If you haven't read it, I would recommend it. She argues straight out of the tradition, which makes her pretty hard to counter no matter how "orthodox" one might be.
Anyway, I'm heading home now. God be praised.
-t
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