By Sister Sharon Kanis, SSND
The Holy Spirit is not white.
She is gray.
In the 1980s, Sandy Spencer (formerly of the Mankato Province) used these simple lines to begin her “Ode to the Holy Spirit.” The suggestion that the Spirit represents the feminine in God was new for me. And was she alluding to the soft feather colors of the mourning dove who broods over the bent world “with ah! bright wings”? Perhaps the color gray signifies dull, cloudy days that water the earth, stirring the greening power of “veriditas” that sustains all life.
Those two lines of poetry tapped into my lifelong fascination with the Spirit.
When I learned about the Trinity in the first grade, I felt sorry for the Holy Spirit. We learned many things about the Creator, the Almighty Father, and His Beloved, Miracle-Working, Suffering Son, Jesus. There was so little attention given to the “third person,” I wondered if someday the Holy Spirit might be born, taking flesh as Jesus did, so we would know the Spirit better.
Later, during midlife, I focused on my relationship with each of the Three. I noticed how I directed my prayer.
Did I instinctively move toward a specific Divine person as I experienced a particular moment in life?
I reflected playfully with the Triune God, wondering, “In whose image am I made?” I imagined others in this light too.
This one is clearly a “Jesus-image,” full of zeal for the mission. That one has the confidence of a child of the Father/Mother, never far from God’s lap. And that one isn’t sure about God but continues to search for signs of the Other and meaning in all things. Is that how the Spirit is most accurately imaged?
In the classroom and retreat gatherings, I have engaged countless people of all ages, from small children to seasoned adults: “Draw a picture of yourself and God. Don’t worry about the artistic value, this is only for you.” As each one described her or his drawing, I invariably saw hints of Mother/Father, Jesus, or Holy Spirit.
My journey with the Holy Spirit has drawn me to new depths in recent years. I am moved that the new SSND Directional Statement entices us to contemplate the Triune God, in whose heart we live, and move and have our being. It does so without referencing the Trinity specifically; rather we are invited to be “credible witnesses of universal communion,” to live in the reality of the oneness of all things.
Now I find that there is no need to struggle to understand the nature of the Divine. We know that God is One. And we know that God is Three in relationship. We know that we are immersed within the One. The Holy Spirit, ablaze in the world, is the gift of that Oneness.
Gerard Manley Hopkins gives us this: “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.…”
Perhaps this is all we need to know.
