Sunday Afternoon Music Videos: Come Holy Spirit

Come, Holy Spirit! Many of our assemblies were bursting with the Spirit today, lit by songs of fire and wind. I could not help but think of John Donne's

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

The Spirit often feels like a boisterous presence among us, shaking the timbers of the churches as well as our souls. Two weeks ago I was in Japan, plans to take a ferry across the Inland Sea scuttled by a great wind - a Tai Phun. Yet it was not the great winds and deluging rains that took my breath away, it was the post-typhoon clarity. The water pouring forth from a steep mountain side, folding and re-folding the light of the sun, molten gold in the afternoon sun.

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt's setting of the traditional Pentecost sequence, Veni Spirtus Sancte, has that same stilling clarity for me. Clear, ringing quietly, in the space cleared by the great winds and flames, the Spirit works here, too...