"One Spirit – Many Spiritualities”.  As our title indicates, we want to reflect on the One Spirit – the Spirit of God – the Spirit of Jesus – and that same Spirit which was poured into our lives at baptism.  And the Many Spiritualities refer to the various ways we, as Christians, come to live, move and have our being in and from the one Spirit of God.

Spirituality has to do with the human experience of God.  As we begin, I’d like to orient us by sketching briefly three basic ways we human beings actually experience God.  Please note carefully:  we are talking about the actual experience of God and not about a theoretical or doctrinal belief system.  Spirituality asks the experiential question.  When it asks about knowing God, it does not mean merely knowing about God – it does not mean merely how you think or been told to think about God.  Rather it intends to inquire about your really knowing God, really experiencing God’s presence and reality.

We can experience God and the universe in three basic ways:  as against us, as for us and as basically neutral.  This latter – experiencing God/universe as basically neutral – means that God is neither for us nor against us.  Though doctrinally I might describe God as just and good, this neutral God experientially is not actively involved in our lives.  We’re basically on our own in the universe.  Nothing is going to happen unless we make it happen.  Experientially God makes no real difference.  It all depends on me.

Then there is the experience of God as against us.  God does make a difference in our lives to the extent that we experience God and the universe as hostile, judgmental and vengeful.  God is watching, judging, condemning us.  And so we seek to please and appease God.  We obey the rules to win God’s favor.

And finally there is the experience of God as for us.  This is where we begin to talk about the Christian experience of God as Spirit and about living out of that experience which is Christian spirituality.  [1Jn 1, 5-7]

I’d like to ask you to listen to two classic texts from our Catholic/Christian tradition which speak about experiencing the Holy Spirit.  The first is a prayer; the second from the creed we recite every Sunday at the liturgy.

The prayer is an ancient prayer – actually a Pentecost hymn written by the German monk Rabanus Maurus (776-856) – that begins in Latin:  Veni, Creator Spiritus!  Let’s listen to the words of the hymn-prayer:

Listen more closely to the words, the images used to speak to and about the Spirit:  living spring, fire, love, inward balm, touch of the Father, giving speech to tongues, flaming light into our senses, flooding love into our hearts, fixing power in our bodies.  These words and images are all about felt, sensed human experience.  Spirit has to do with our felt, sensed human experience of God’s abundantly giving and gracious presence.  If you experience the Spirit, you know it – and you really know God.

And now listen to the words from the creed we say at every Sunday liturgy.  The creed is all about the Trinity:  Father, Son, Spirit.  We begin by addressing God as Father Creator, maker of heaven and earth.  Then we move to the Son and recall Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and return.  And when we come to the Spirit, this is what we say:

Our belief in the Spirit is about the Spirit giving life and speaking through people/prophets.  Spirit has to do with people gathering in community/Church – with forgiveness and new life/resurrection.  Again these are all realities to be experienced.

I want to point out something important and, I hope, helpful.  We use the word “creed” – the profession of faith.  “Creed” comes from the Latin credere, meaning to believe.  Credere is itself a composite of two Latin words:  cor and dare.  Cor means “heart” and dare means “give”.  To cor-dare or credere is to give one’s heart over to.  And that is what it means to say “I believe” (credo).  To say “I believe in the Holy Spirit” means:  I give myself, my heart, my deepest self over to the Spirit who gives me life, new life.

According then to ancient prayer and creed – our tradition tells us the Spirit moves us - not out of this world – but more deeply into it – more deeply into sensible human experience – into concrete human realities – into human communities – into people speaking – into new ways of living – into senses and minds waking up – into hearts flooded with love and bodies strengthened with power.  The Spirit makes us more deeply, more fully human.  To believe in the Spirit is to follow the Spirit’s move – to give oneself over to the Spirit’s lead – into new ways of living in community – into awakened minds and senses – into a love-flooded heart.

It is on the basis of this experience of Spirit that Christians regard the experiences we described earlier - of God as neutral or hostile - to be utterly false.  These are false gods.  There is no God who is neutral to us, leaving us just to ourselves alone.  There is no God who is hostile and judgmental toward us, expecting us to win his favor.  The Spirit of God smashes these false gods.  These are idols of our own making.

We speak of the Christian experience of Spirit.  We do so because this experience is Jesus’ own experience of Spirit – Jesus’ experience of God.  In his ministry Jesus tried to share his experience with those he called disciples.  A disciple is one who tries to follow Christ into his experience of God – tries to follow Christ into his experience of Spirit.

Jesus spoke with his disciples about his own experience of God’s Spirit.  We say “Spirit”.  Jesus said ruach, the Hebrew word for “breath”.  For Jesus to experience God’s ruach, God’s Spirit is to experience God’s breath – God’s warm and warming presence.  All four gospels tell us about Jesus’ experience of God’s Spirit at his baptism.  This could only have come from Jesus himself telling his disciples what his interior depth-experience was like when he was baptized by John in the Jordan.

Matthew describes the experience in chapter three [Mt 3, 13-17].  He saw the Spirit of God descending… and a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”  The experience of being a beloved son/daughter is the experience of living in a loving universe:  I am beloved, I am taken care of, I am believed in.  In this universe the heavens that open up reveal that the foundation of all things is love – unconditional love.  Love is the sustaining, primal energy of the universe.  No matter how dark and tragic things get, love can be trusted because the love in my heart is the ruach of God, the Spirit of God – the sensible, the warm and warming presence of God.  I know God to be present – I know God’s Spirit – as I experience powerful love flooding into my heart.

And in his ministry that follows the baptism Jesus will be at pains insistantly to speak of this love – this God-presence he finds within himself.  It is a presence and power that does not resist evildoers but turns the other cheek.  It is a love-presence that moves him to love enemies, to pray for persecutors.  It is a love-presence that joyfully recognizes and sees its own perfection and completeness when it embraces the evil and the good – the righteous and the unrighteous.

That is the One Spirit – the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of God.  In our Trinitarian imagination it may be better to imagine the Spirit not as a third, distinct individual person but rather as the loving connection between the Father and Son.  Better yet – to imagine the Spirit as the connecting, the relating.  Think of the Spirit as a verb – a doing and acting – like breathing.

The One Spirit!  But what about the Many Spiritualities?  As we said earlier, spirituality is about the various ways we come to live, move and have our being in and from the One Spirit – the Spirit of God.  Spirituality has to do with our living out of the Spirit.  That’s why we can talk about spiritual life – life lived in the Spirit – with the Spirit – through the Spirit.  There are many ways of talking about spirituality because there are so many different spiritualities.  In the history of the Christian community there have been eastern and western spiritualities, Benedictine, Franciscan, Dominican, Carmelite and Jesuit spiritualities.  Looking further we see Lutheran, Calvinist and Anglican spiritualities.  And even further we see Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, and Native American spiritualities.  The possibilities are endless.

For the sake of simplicity I want to talk about spirituality by referring us back to Jesus in the gospels and to Jesus’ experience of living out of the Spirit of God.  Immediately after the baptism in the Jordan, the scriptures tell us, Jesus goes into the wilderness – the desert.  Matthew says:  “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” [Mt 4, 1]  And Luke puts it:  “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.” [Lk 4, 1-2]

Here again in the accounts of Jesus’ temptations we clearly have an example of where Jesus spoke to the disciples about his own experience – his own spiritual life – his own struggles to live out of his experience of being “Beloved Child of God”.  Remember that experience involves handing oneself over to the movement and lead of the Spirit – to the movement and lead of unconditional love.  To say:  “I am the beloved of God” is to allow yourself to be finally named and identified by love and to live out of that naming and identification.

In the wilderness Jesus is tempted not to live out of his name and identity experienced in the Spirit.  He is tempted to live out of other names and identities.  The temptation to turn stones into bread is the temptation to define ourselves finally and fully by our effectiveness – by the fruits of our actions.  Standing on the pinnacle of the temple is the temptation to use God and religion for your own purposes.  Jesus knew and felt in his gut there was such a thing as the diabolical perverse use of religion.  And the final temptation – seeing all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor – is simply the temptation to name and identify yourself as powerful – as in control.  Rather than naming myself finally and fully as “I am beloved of God”, I choose to name and value myself otherwise as “I have power; I am in control of people and events.”  Jesus knew the struggle to live out of the living and loving Spirit.  His spirituality was his daily labor to live the day in harmony with the Spirit – in harmony with the elemental energy of the universe – unconditional love – enemy-loving love – cheek-turning love.

Jesus described a life lived in such harmony as living in the kingdom of God.  The prayer he taught his disciples – the Our Father – offers a succinct picture of daily life in the kingdom.  The kingdom is where the Father’s will – the Father’s love is done – and is done by us.  That means we give daily bread to one another.  We have care for one another’s needs.  Doing the Father’s will means we forgive one another for the inevitable sins that come from our selfishness, our suspicions and our fears.  Trespasses are forgiven.  And for the kingdom to come on earth means that we do not stand in self-righteous judgment of one another but rather try to come to one another with compassion and understanding.  Then people are not put to the test but are helped to be delivered from their evil.

Whatever shapes our many spiritualities assume, they must all have common ground with this spirituality of the kingdom of God – the spirituality we find in the prayer Jesus taught us – the Our Father.

Talking about prayer – I think the Our Father offers us a model.  Our prayer should always be aimed at bringing us into the presence of the Father’s love.  We now know that is coming into the presence of the Spirit.  Simply being present is the goal.  Personally I think we make prayer unnecessarily complex when we emphasize technique.  should be utterly simple.

I think one of our greatest obstacles – to prayer – to spirituality and spiritual life – to experiencing the Spirit of God – is, quite simply, our lifestyle – our frenetic lifestyle which so prizes busyness.  We each of us need to recognize the culturally powerful pressure we have within us to be busy, to appear busy and to talk about being busy.  In our culture being busy somehow equates with being important – being worthy and dedicated.  We must let go of that!  Our deepest humanity is at risk.

I want to conclude with a perky and appropriate poem from Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  It speaks about the Spirit and our spirituality.