Happy Birthday, Holy Spirit

Prayer is a funny thing. I wish I prayed more. I wish I was better at it. I wish I knew the right words or I wish I could focus my thoughts better. I wish the world around me didn't bleed into my prayers. I am reminded of the anonymous Russian pilgrim who set out to fulfill the Pauline command to pray without ceasing. He wandered the country looking for some wise person to tell him how this could become accomplished. And a piece of advice he received was to pray the Jesus prayer (Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner) over and over again, 3000 times a day, 6000 times a day, and so on. I think about that and can't help but think of the tragic character Franny in Salinger's Franny and Zooey who went literally crazy with the prayer on her lips. And then I go back to the pilgrim who learned the most important lesson about praying that prayer over and over again. It was that once the prayers of his lips became the prayers of his heart, then he would pray without ceasing. I love that lesson, and I try to think of the pilgrim (and not Franny) when I reflect on it. The prayer of my heart, not just the prayer of my lips.

Ah, yes! If only it were that simple...

I wish I could spend some time earnestly learning how to pray better, stronger, more authentically. I wish everything I did was so pointed towards God that everything I did was a prayer to God. But it's not the case, not for me. I simply don't know how. I will struggle with it, struggle with my thoughts and feelings, and my communication with the divine, and I will search for the words and the right heart and all that forever. Which, then, leads me to the title of this blog. Happy Birthday, Holy Spirit! Today is Pentecost, 50 days after Easter. Today is the day we celebrate the Holy Spirit depended on those gathered. The Holy Spirit which was sent as an advocate, sent to show us that God is still here, God is still with us. God has not left us alone. Even as we struggle, God knows and God hears. And what's even better is that God intercedes for us when we aren't strong enough to do or say or feel or be as we ought. My most favorite, most comforting, passage in all of scripture comes from Romans 8: "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God" (v.26-27). Sighs, sighs too deep for words.

Praise God for the coming of the Holy Spirit so that men and women will prophesy and the old shall dream dreams and the young shall have visions. Praise God for the Holy Spirit who intercedes for us when we can't for ourselves. Come, Holy Spirit, come.