Pentecost

My last few moments with my dad were frustrating.  As a pastor, I have spent time at many hospice bedsides.  But this was different.  It was my dad.  I wanted to take every single thing in.  The muddling of the skin on his legs, the way his cheekbones were suddenly pronounced, his arthritic pointer fingers and horse-like fingernails.  The last three days of his life I just sat next to him in a semi-comfortable reclining chair, joking with him, reading to him, holding his hand.  I watched our favorite movies and played his favorite native American flute music.  And when I needed to freak out, I left the room to breathe.  When I returned, I listened, attentively, to his each and every breath.  And when the time came for me to leave, to fly back to my 8-month-old baby, my teenager, and my husband, I kissed my dad on his cool head, stood up, rested my hand on his shoulder, and I told him I loved him.  He gestured for me to lean over.  He wanted to say something to me.  His mouth moved and sound came out, but I couldn’t decipher what he was trying to say.  As I walked out of the room that morning, knowing it was the last time I would see my dad alive, I could only guess what he had said to me.  Was it a fart joke?  Was he asking for more water?  Was he telling me he loved me?  Thanking me for sitting with him?  What had he said to me?!

The most frustrating part of this grief is that, while I hold on to that last memory with my dad, I have been holding a similar experience in tandem.  My daughter’s 14-month birthday is today and she has been babbling incessantly for several months now, but I have no idea what she’s saying.  There are times when she even grabs my face in her hands and speaks to me so directly, but I have no clue what words she’s using or what she’s trying to communicate.  It is beyond frustrating.  So, when she does this, I find myself answering her, saying “I love you too.”  Because that’s gotta be what she’s saying, right?!

I’ve been angry for months about the fact that I don’t know what my dad’s last words to me were, and I find myself angry that I don’t have a clue what my daughter is saying either.  I feel so left out.  I feel so separate from them both.  In my faith, separation from people is not okay.  It’s typically a sign of a spiritual sickness.

Whenever I’m confronted with a spiritual issue, my mentor asks me to pick a story in scripture that reminds me of whatever it is I’m feeling.  And so, when my dad died, the story that kept popping up in my mind was the story of Pentecost.

As a self-proclaimed church nerd, Pentecost has always been a favorite holy day of mine.  It is an important day in the church year where we celebrate the Holy Spirit in action, creating “the church”.  In the story of the Pentecost, people from all different ethnicities and countries of origin were gathered in one place, praising God.  All at once a rushing wind blew through and all those gathered understood each other.  In theological terms, they were “of the same spirit”.  Even though they spoke different languages, they understood each other.

I was not looking forward to today being Pentecost.  As a matter of fact, just thinking about today has been making me angry for months because I want a Pentecost experience with my dad and with my daughter.  I want to understand them.  I want to feel that we are “of the same spirit”.  I don’t think I realized how important language is to me and to my spiritual journey until now. 

These past six months have forced me to sit in the unknown.  I can continue to speculate what my dad was trying to say to me.  I can continue to speculate what my daughter is saying.  But ultimately, is it our language that makes us “of the same spirit”?  I don’t think so. 

Today I find comfort in the fact that even though I don’t know the words my father spoke on his death bed or my daughters babble, I know there is love.  And I wonder if that’s really what the Pentecost story is about.  There they were, all these different people from different places with different languages.  And it was their experience of God’s love that they were professing.  

In the game Dungeons and Dragons, each character has a class (rogue, paladin, cleric, etc., the “job” that they do) and each character has a race (halfling, elf, orc, human, etc., “what” they are).  One thing I always like about creating characters in D&D is that even though they all speak their own languages; the creators also made a “common” language.  This way characters can interact, wherever they are on the journey with whoever they encounter.   

Outside of the D&D world, here in real life, I wonder if love, love of each other and love of God, is our common language.  I wonder if love is what makes us “of the same spirit”.  And so, this Pentecost, I celebrate the love I share with my dad and my daughter.  I will never know what my dad was trying to say to me.  But I knew his heart.  And I know my daughter's heart.  Because that language, the language of our hearts is our common language.  That brings me comfort and makes me feel connected.  And that is a true Pentecost experience.  The feeling of connection.  Thanks be to God!