Smoke on the Water (Pentecost 2023)
…while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.”’ John 7
Thirsty for Love,
Thirsty for meaning,
Thirsty for Truth,
The journey begins.
First out there,
Far and wide,
And I pray only for the strength,
To travel on,
‘God give me providence,
A place to lay my head tonight,
A generous public,
To fill my busking hat,
And may my traveling companions and I Eat, in the morning, our daily bread.’
But I do feel your voice within me,
And I love the stories. Sometimes even,
when I stumble into a church, just
to rest from the sun and the road dust,
It even seems the stories
and the Voice of Presence,
Speak together within my soul.
And the Soul groans,
‘I am so thirsty…’
The dust settles, and
I enter the Breath………………….
~ breathe ~
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Acts 2
Something,
No, not thing,
Has brought me, mysteriously,
To the upper room of me,
To the prayer of Ages,
In the breathing and the Silence.
The world in which I have been so,
Passionately travelling,
Where the quenching always seems,
To may be waiting around the next bend,
Or if not, then surely the following
hundred miles or so,
Seems somehow absorbed now,
As I am led within myself,
To a wellspring, of Living Water.
And the Voice-Presence vibrates,
Though there are no words,
And I drink, deep and slow………
~ breathe ~
Peter shouted out to the crowds, ‘…this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”’ Acts continued
Visions and dreams,
They come together,
The old and the young,
Are One.
The wellspring is bubbling up,
From the centre,
Of time and space,
Until rivers of Living Water,
Flow from every part of me,
In all directions,
Flowing into a great Ocean,
Filled and overflowing,
With the Water from all God’s Creatures,
And the Spirit says, ‘All Being, Live!’
Tonnau Duw ('God's waves') Fr Tim Ardouin 