Weekly Inspiration (6/1/23)

Quote of the Week

" The gift of the Spirit at Pentecost was not so much the gift of speaking foreign languages, but the gift of comprehension that resulted in unity and understanding. In a world so divided by mistrust, enmity, and fear, the gift of comprehension feels elusive. Yet those are the very gifts given when God poured upon those early disciples the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

-Br. James Koester
Society of Saint John the Evangelist

Poem of the Week

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
 
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
 
- T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets, Little Gidding