Tuesday 20 November 2007

Today is a bit of a contrast between the spirit and the "human" in regard to hearing the voice of God's own Holy Spirit - continuing from our piece from yesterday (by Brian Blount).



The spirit is constant.

The "human" is not. Being human signals contingency, limitation, and context. Because they are human, our spirits always encounter God through the context in which god finds us and we find ourselves. This means that each one of us as individuals or in community always perceives God - and what it is that God wants from us - differently.



I'm sitting in a room with a variety of people around me. It would be interesting to see how each of them would interpret what Blount is writing here. I suppose some might say that because "being human signals contingency, limitation, and context," we need an outside word to make sure we are all hearing the word in the same way. The trouble with that notion is that we are place in the predicament of choosing which hearing we will all accept as an encounter with our God. Too often, some claim to hear and then proclaim that all must hear as they do. And yet, from outside of that closed hearing, there are often many who hear differently and the differences are often vitally important for the whole community to hear. It is not easy to listen to the different ways we hear and the different things we hear from this Spirit of God. And yet, within a community that hears differently, there is build a community that begins to grasp the wide open movement of the Spirit of God to change what is in place into something new.



Connection: To listen again to the voice of God as it is comes alive through others means we must honor the speaker. Without honoring the other, we lose some of the power of what they have heard. If we are each honored, who knows what we will be hearing together during this day.



We live within range of your Holy Voice, O God. Now we need the patience and the peace to listen even when it is not the voice we want or the voice we expect. Calm our hearts so we can be still and hear more than our own voices. Amen.