Introduction to a new voice
Over the next couple of months, we will be hearing from a new voice here in this blog space. Let me introduce you to our guest blogger, Gus Polman. Gus is a volunteer with Red Clover and brings a great deal of life experience to us. I hope you will engage his posts in the coming weeks.
Who is Gus? A settler of Dutch extraction, who emigrated to Canada at age 1 ½ yrs, he eventually served not-for-profit orgs, including school districts, as custodian, teacher, editor, mobilizer, power engineer, unionist, and in committee. His gladness and the country’s need perhaps met best in volunteering for Hon. Jody Wilson-Raybould and her vision for a stronger Canada in successful re-election. Now- retired Gus is still learning to love kindness and walk humbly in multiple dwellings on the unceded lands of the Katzie, Kwantlen and Semiahmoo peoples.
The following is Gus’s reflection on the role of the Spirit in the work of reconciliation for those who follow Jesus.
Add Spirit, will stir, spur
In seeking justice, I think of and look to, Spirit often, try to pay attention to what God’s doing. The windy Spirit’s sure shown up in these years of world trouble(s). Both coincident with, and also through what the COVID pandemic exposed more clearly, Spirit’s been evidently stirring hearts and minds of people. (Witness local and international movement in recognizing systemic racism, the effects of white supremacy, whiteness, economic and health disparities, marginalizing of peoples, and which groups are soonest affected by climate emergency.)
Noticing requires both the Spirit, and prayer; God gave us these to notice. Holy Spirit is Breath, and prayer the air we breathe.
The late Rachel Held Evans –who by faith is still speaking--describes [in Searching for Sunday] the Spirit as “moving through every language and every culture of this world, bursting out of every category and defying every metaphor.” This is the often understated, underestimated, power of Easter, still bursting through today, promised by Christ, underlined at Pentecost. Perhaps you see, feel, and experience this Spirit around you, in you, over you, through you.
But what about the evil we see? Surely we notice evil, say, gangs doing shootings? The shootings are not “of God,” but I believe God is in the shootings, right there, closer than we might think or feel. God knows our anguish. As Whitney Houston sang so clearly, God hears our cry, and Spirit groans with our spirit,” pitied every groan.” Long as I live, trouble may rise. And Spirit’s raising up a treasure of upstanders who stand up for what is well and just, and stand against that which is not at all well.
Wherever we are in our journey, there’s more of God, more of Creator’s resources for our ability to respond to evil with good. Right there with us when we experience and resist injustice, Spirit offering God and God’s loving resources. Theologian and spiritual director Elizabeth Sung reminds us that Christ exampled daily spiritual strength training in and with the spiritual disciplines. We, too, can use these indirect means to receive God’s actions in and through us. God’s doing the Easter rise-up God’s good at. But churches do well to also remember the middle day, space, of suffering and anguish – by disciples, and Christ— ongoing reality of people(s) who experience trauma.
We work and wait, and our waiting has hope because we’re waiting on, and in God. We wait with Breath. We wait in Easter power that life can come through death. We wait walking toward those in suffering and anguish in solidarity. And we wait walking toward the justice that is made manifest in love.