VENIDA DEL
ESPIRITU SANTO – THE COMING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
(By: Karla
Wagener on Pentecost, May 31, 2020).
¨What is Love¨ - A song by Haddaway
¨America,
Love it or leave it¨, has often been repeated over the years. I left the United States more than 30 years
ago not because I did or did not love it, but because I needed a new way of
life. I was not totally conscious of
what I was doing and only through many years of toil and sacrifice can I begin
to understand just what my new life signified.
Love is
quite a word! Surely, we do not know
truly what it is or experience it fully.
Reflecting
back, and witnessing the direction the USA has taken, I think I probably love
it and have more compassion now than I ever did in youth when I felt perplexed
and full of questionings of existence.
When I left
the USA in 1987, I thought or imagined I would stay in Argentina for about 6
months. Conditions made the time turn
into years. My children began school. We suffered economic, family and personal
complications.
People say
many things about love. I think maybe
love is a picture or image rather than a definition. It is an image that changes and develops with
different situations. Another word for
love is care or charity. Others are
tenderness, intimacy, fondness, warmth.
It is what fills what is needed and it remains after all other
essentials diminish. It endures
indefinitely.
I feel for
what is going on in the USA recently.
Since childhood I have been aware of many mistakes in certain attitudes
it has such as alienation, denial, materialism, dominance over other countries,
a certain rigidness as a system. Of
course, it also has many positive qualities also! I came across a priest in a Mass in a trip I
made to Maryland in 2012. He told me,
¨There is a lack of a true Spirituality in the USA¨. He talked about the people finding it
difficult to be truly spiritual because of the dependence on material objects.
In my
particular case, it was not so much a question of love, but of need. I needed something I did not find in
America. Some kind of sociability or
connection or perhaps identification I did not find in such a structured,
unyielding environment. It is easier to
analyze from a distance, after the passing of much time. Perhaps the word is spontaneity. Spontaneity is an adjective, coming or
resulting from a natural impulse or tendency without effort or premeditation;
natural and unconstrained; unplanned.
Some
synonyms for spontaneity are improvisation, impulse, inclination, will,
tendency, whim, naturalness, ease, uninhibitedness, unrestraint,
lightheartedness, abandonment. Spirit is also a synonym for spontaneity.
During my
adolescence in the 1960´s a theatre teacher told a group of us that ¨the
definition of spontaneity was an adequate response to a new situation and a new
response to an old repeated situation¨.
At about
that time, people in my neighborhood and especially my 9 siblings thought I was
a Hippy! They branded me. Yes, I was a sort of rebel, but a rebel with
a cause. Justice and humanity! Love!
Caring! Peace not War! I did not identify myself with the Hippy
movement at all.
Looking
back I now realize that I was or should have been branded ¨Catholic¨ (which
means ¨universal¨. I was not a
practicing Catholic at that time, but I held those specific, detailed values
within. What I had studied and lived in
my childhood remained intact, even as I questioned Institutions. It seems
almost comical to me now that I have somehow reached a greater, deeper success
and favorable outcome in life by letting go of many material things and
discovering spirituality. It is not a
matter of where we live physically, but that we discover what is most important
and be at terms with and be able to love those we are with.
This
discovery is of the greatest importance and is such a blessing. Perhaps it is something like a ¨place¨ or
¨image¨ within one´s own inner being, discovering love and spirit. It can happen anywhere, and perhaps when
least expected! Since today is Pentecost I would like to share it and hope to
help others discover this promised experience.
The Spirit comes and goes, like the wind, like the smell of a delicious
perfumed oil, like the flame from a fire burning, like the brightness of your lovely
eyes shining out benevolence, like spontaneous adequate change in reaction to what is
old and also what is new!
