The Holy Spirit (Her, Him, Wild Goose, as it suits you)

Those of you who are intimate with the Holy Spirit might scratch your heads when I say I cannot remember my first encounter with His awesome presence, it was too long ago, too much has happened since and my brain is too aged and addled to retain such information and nor does it remotely matter.

One of the most important things to understand about the Spirit of God is that He’s a doer. It’s difficult for us humans to understand how much of a big deal this is. God does not show up for chit chat, to have a coffee or speculate on life, the universe and everything. This can be seen in every part of nature down to the smallest particle, purposeness without guile or deceit. Secondly He shows up only if we are willing, although it doesn’t always seem that way. Many of my own experiences on what has been an epic journey have occurred seemingly by chance or randomness, yet with the benefit of hindsight, I was always ready, open to God, even if vastly unprepared for what was released into my life.

The point is that this is a living relationship and over time I’ve noticed that I have slowly and steadily become a more natural creature, more true to nature, including my own human nature, with little interest in the wiles, deceits and vanities of humanity.

I have, for a long time, been saying that there’s nothing money can’t fuck up, our heads in particular. For the majority of people money is the primary means of our oppression, it is not just a facilitator of barter and trade, if it ever was anything so simple, but of control. There is no legitimate reason for poverty to exist other than it suits governments and corporations in controlling our lives. Poverty is violence, not least because it stops people from rising above a state of servitude. The biggest difference between the markets, religion and God is servitude, God wants us to be free.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth and it is in and through Him that we cease to be orphans of the world and become beloved and free. Granted, not quickly, because we have to grow into it, liberated by persistent effort, wisdom, knowledge and understanding. The depression that so dominated most of my life was finally overcome because I worked with it and embraced it as a participant in my own liberation from it. A miracle might have done the trick, but I’d have missed many of the lessons I’ve learnt in journeying with it.

Many years ago now, I left the church and that great evil and murderous oppressor – religion. In fact, I ran for my life, sick and oppressed by dogma and religion. It was a terrifying decision, to face God bare arsed and on my own. In reality, it was more in the traditions of indigenous peoples across the world, to embrace the Great Spirit of life and so it has proved to be. To know and love the living presence of God, who comes on a whisper of wings to fill the open heart, in loving kindness – stronger, more vibrant and vital than life itself.

In Celtic tradition, the Holy Spirit is represented as a wild goose, and it took me a long time to become aware of how true and accurate that is. To this day, when the Spirit comes, I start leaking. A lovely woman in the last church I was involved in, said to me later that she always knew when the Holy Spirit arrived because she’d see me leaking tears and, yes, it is possible to laugh and cry at the same time. Great kindness does exactly the same thing to me, but the kindness of God is overwhelming, surpassing all.

The great offence of the cross is an offence against ego, pride and human vanity, as offensive today as Jesus was to those who nailed Him to it. Do I understand the ways of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit? Yes, about 0.00001¹⁰ percent, because God surpasses human understanding and I have no problem with that at all and because human vanity, which I understand a whole lot better, is useless. I’d rather be ridiculed for my faith than be a slave to human vanity and money, which threaten all life on earth.

The power of God is incalculable, and yet finds expression in love for the down trodden, broken and weary and I would rather engage in a conspiracy of kindness than anything else on earth.

Keith Lindsay-Cameron aka KOG. 28 May 2021.