The Holy Spirit of Communication and Fellowship: A Reflection for Pentecost

"When the holy day of Pentecost came 50 days after Passover, they were gathered together in one place.

Picture yourself among the disciples:

A sound roars from the sky without warning, the roar of a violent wind, and the whole house where you are gathered reverberates with the sound. Then a flame appears, dividing into smaller flames and spreading from one person to the next. All the people present are filled with the Holy Spirit and begin speaking in languages they’ve never spoken, as the Spirit empowers them.

Because of the holy festival, there are devout Jews staying as pilgrims in Jerusalem from every nation under the sun. They hear the sound, and a crowd gathers. They are amazed because each of them can hear the group speaking in their native languages. They are shocked and amazed by this...

Whoever made a place for his [Peter] message in their hearts received the baptism; in fact, that day alone, about 3,000 people joined the disciples. 

The community continually committed themselves to learning what the apostles taught them, gathering for fellowship, breaking bread, and praying. Everyone felt a sense of awe because the apostles were doing many signs and wonders among them. There was an intense sense of togetherness among all who believed; they shared all their material possessions in trust. They sold any possessions and goods that did not benefit the community and used the money to help everyone in need. They were unified as they worshipped at the temple day after day. In homes, they broke bread and shared meals with glad and generous hearts. The new disciples praised God, and they enjoyed the goodwill of all the people of the city. Day after day the Lord added to their number everyone who was experiencing liberation."

Acts 2: 1 - 7; 41 - 47 (The Voice)

The Spirit of Communication: In the story, we hear that the Holy Spirit gives the disciples the gift of being able to speak in different languages, so that every one of their audience understands them. 

Communication is the creation and exchange of meaning. Good communication is therefore vital to healthy spiritual community. Sustaining good communication is not simple. We are highly complex beings and our communication is complicated. There are many factors influencing how we communicate, including culture, education, upbringing, neurodiversity, context, energy and emotions. We have many means of communication now, in addition to face to face interactions. We can use the telephone, email, text messages, social media applications, and so on. So many ways to be understood and so many ways to be misunderstood! 

Unitarians can be fond of using many words, but words are only a small part of communication. When we communicate face to face, much of our communication is nonverbal, such as body language and facial expression. Electronic communication can be easily misinterpreted because words are isolated from nonverbal cues that provide more information. Whatever the mode of communication, the message sent is not necessarily the message received, because both sender and receiver must filter the message through their thoughts and feelings. Asking for feedback is the only way to be sure that our message has been understood in the way we intended it. Every message has content, conveyed by words, and feeling, expressed through the nonverbal cues of body language, gestures, facial expression, tone of voice, emphasis, and volume. If the content and feeling do not match, the feeling usually carries more weight, for example, if we say “I'm not angry with you” in a loud angry voice. 

Different forms of neurodiversity may affect some aspects of communication strongly. For example, people on the autistic spectrum may use direct and honest speech, which may be perceived as rude. They may find it hard to pick up on nonverbal clues and to participate in small talk, which for neurotypical people can be an important part of socialising. I have recently become more aware of aphantasia, a form of neurodiversity which includes the inability to visualise pictures in the mind while awake. “Picture yourselves among the disciples” - the phrase used by the author of The Voice bible translation – would be largely meaningless for someone with aphantasia. 

Being aware of these differences can help us learn about how we might adjust our communication so that we might be better understood by others. How we communicate with each other is important and so is how we talk to ourselves. I don't mean walking round the house muttering to myself, although I do that too. What I mean is the internal dialogue inside our minds. 

Valarie Kaur, in See No Stranger, talks about the inner voices that exist in her mind, the voice of fear and the voice of wisdom. The voice of fear, which she calls “the Little Critic”, shames and judges her. He says things like, “What will people think?” “What's wrong with you?” “They're going to eat you alive!” Here's what she says about the voice of wisdom, which she calls “Wise Woman”, “Her voice is quiet. There is so much noise in my mind – the Little Critic but also the cacophony of noises from the outside world, an endless stream of breaking news and social media and other people's thoughts. I have to get really quiet in order to hear her. How do I know when I am hearing her voice? She is tender and truthful. She is not afraid of anything or anyone. She does not give me all the answers, but she does know what I need to do in this moment – to wonder, grieve, fight, rage, listen, reimagine, breathe, or push. She helps me show up to the labor as my best self... My most vigilant spiritual practice is finding the seconds of solitude to get quiet enough to hear the Wise Woman in me.”

Just as we stillness and quiet help us to tune in to our own inner wisdom, some of the most powerful communication between people can be entirely without words. Consider what Thich Nhat Hanh says in Peace is This Moment about what we can transmit and receive in silence, through energy and presence, “You don't need to talk to communicate. If you sit and radiate peace, stability, and joy, you are offering something very precious to the other person. If the other person is truly present and sitting with solidity and peace, you can receive a lot of energy from them. True communication is possible in silence. Silence can be very elegant.” 

This brings me to the Spirit of Fellowship. The Apostles are sharing the Gospel, the good news, of the transformative power of joining the fellowship of the followers of Jesus Christ. The Spirit inspires the new and growing community to share everything – bread, prayer, possessions. What is the good news of Unitarianism? We may no longer speak in terms of forgiveness of sins and eternal salvation, but we do invite people to experience our transformational fellowship – a place where all are welcome, where people are loving and forgiving, where we share from our hearts, where the Spirit of Life connects us and inspires us to lead good lives. May we have the courage to spread the liberating message of our Unitarian faith and issue an open invitation to join our transformative fellowship for those who find a place for it in their hearts. 

I have spoken about the importance of the way we talk with each other and ourselves, but let us also remember that actions speak louder than words. Our Unitarian movement is founded on deeds not creeds. Our forebears who had the courage to break away from the established church and its elaborate creeds and rituals were inspired by the simplicity of the early Christian community as described in the Acts of the Apostles. I believe this is a vision of unity that can inspire us today – gathering for fellowship and worship, sharing with those in need, with glad and generous hearts.

Vismaad: Choose to Wonder

"Wondrous is sound, wondrous is ancient wisdom. Wondrous are the creatures, wondrous are their varieties. Wondrous are the forms, wondrous are the colours. Wondrous are the beings who wander around unclothed. Wondrous is the wind, wondrous is the water. Wondrous is the fire, which works wonders. Wondrous is the earth, wondrous the sources of creation. Wondrous are the tastes we seek and seize. Wondrous is union, wondrous is separation. Wondrous is hunger, wondrous is satisfaction. Wondrous is divine praise, wondrous is divine adoration. Wondrous is the wilderness, wondrous is the right path. Wondrous is closeness, wondrous is distance. Wondrous to face the divine, ever-present now. Beholding these wonders, I am wonderstruck. O Nanak, those who understand this are blessed."

Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Asa di Var, 463:18 – 464:4 by Guru Nanak, translated by Valarie Kaur

Listen to a beautiful recording of a recitation of this prayer in Punjabi here

“At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them, and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18: 1 – 4 

What do Jesus' words that we need to become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven mean to you? They speak to me to the need to redevelop our sense of wonder. Children have an inbuilt sense of wonder. Everything is new and marvellous to a small child – butterflies, flowers, snow, clouds, frogs... A few days ago, I was in the vivarium at the Manchester Museum. A small child was peering intently into one of the frog tanks, and began chatting to me, telling me which colour frogs he could see. “I see a red one!” “I see a green one!” “I see a black one with yellow spots!” Then he grew bolder and said, putting his fingers round his eyes like a pair of specs, “I have these visi-things that I put on and I can see the bones underneath!” His Dad laughed and told me he'd been happily staring into the same frog tank for ages. “He just loves it here,” he said, “he thinks it's all wonderful.” And so it is.

Perhaps we might feel that as we get older and more cynical about the world, we begin to lose our childlike sense of wonder. But the good news is that regarding the world and each other with wonder is a choice that we can make, again and again. Wonder changes us for the better, expanding our hearts and minds, sparking curiosity and imagination. When we are curious about other people, we listen to their stories and imagine the reality of their lives, which leads us to empathy, compassion, and love.

We often hear the words awe and wonder used together, particularly to refer to experiences when we perceive our tininess in an infinite universe. Awe is an emotional response to perceiving something so vast that it transcends our current frame of reference. In the wake of awe, we experience wonder or reflective curiosity, which leads us to reshape our existing understanding of the world in order to make sense of our experience. Researchers from the University of California studied the effect of feelings of awe and wonder on emotional health and social connections. They found that experiencing awe and wonder increased the inclinations to care for, share with and assist other people.  A 2019 study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that experiencing awe led to decreased self-importance and materialism, and increased humility, connectedness, satisfaction and wellbeing.

The Irish philosopher John Moriarty describes his experiences of wonder in his book, Invoking Ireland, “It was mostly when I’d be out hunting that it would happen to me. Even if it was only a hare for my supper I was hunting, it could happen to me. I’d be walking along by a river maybe and an animal light that would never be morning would dawn in me and for as long as it lasted I would know what animals know. I swear to God, I would know what bushes know and I might as well give up then because, no matter how hungry I was, I couldn’t level a gun at anything. It was like waking up to the wonder of things. And wonder is danger to how we normally are. It can bring down minds. Eyes and minds. And to say that it can bring down ways of seeing and knowing a world is to say that it can bring down worlds. It was wonder that brought down my first eyes and mind. It brought down my first world.” 

This idea of wonder as an extraordinary knowing that allows us to penetrate life's mystery and changes our perception of the world is encapsulated in the Punjabi word, Vismaad. The Sikh musician and blogger Shivpreet Singh describes vismaad as, “a state of being that goes beyond the limitations of ego and encompasses a deep appreciation for the mysteries of life.” Ego, writes Singh, is the antithesis of vismaad, since it acts as a hindrance to the experience of wonder. Ego-centric people falsely believe that they possess complete knowledge, which eliminates the mystery and curiosity that accompanies vismaad. In contrast, those who have attained spiritual enlightenment, embody the highest form of vismaad,  possessing the ability to perceive the divine within all things. As Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, said, "Wondrous to face the divine, ever-present now. Beholding these wonders, I am wonderstruck. O Nanak, those who understand this are blessed.”

This ability to see all things as wondrous is echoed in the words of Rabbi and civil rights activist, Abraham Joshua Heschel, who wrote, “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement... get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”

In her book See No Stranger the Sikh anti-racist activist and founder of the Revolutionary Love project, Valarie Kaur, speaks of wonder as the wellspring for love. The title of her book comes from one of Guru Nanak's compositions in the Guru Granth Sahib, in which he says, “I see no enemy. I see no stranger. All of us belong to each other... The One pervades all.” 

Kaur writes, “Seeing no stranger begins in wonder. It is to look upon the face of anyone and choose to say: You are a part of me I do not yet know. Wonder is the wellspring for love… It is easy to wonder about the internal life of the people closest to us. It is harder to wonder about people who seem like strangers or outsiders. But when we choose to wonder about people we don’t know, when we imagine their lives and listen for their stories, we begin to expand the circle of who we see as part of us... Wonder is where love begins, but the failure to wonder is the beginning of violence. Once people stop wondering about others, once they no longer see others as part of them, they disable their instinct for empathy. And once they lose empathy, they can do anything to them, or allow anything to be done to them. Entire institutions built to preserve the interests of one group of people over another depend on this failure of imagination.”

“Never lose a holy curiosity,” said Albert Einstein. So let us keep wondering about the world. Let us keep wondering about everyone we meet. For when we keep wondering, we open the door of our heart to curiosity, imagination, empathy, compassion, and love. May it be so.

Guru Nanak, with followers Mardana and Bala, by W. Kapur Singh