Letter from Amy: May 20, 2026

Pentecost by Andrew Wyeth, 1989 (USA)

Dear friends,

This Sunday is Pentecost, the Feast of the Holy Spirit, one of the biggest celebrations of the church year (annual reminders: wear red and bring something to share for a global potluck!).

Pentecost is also the culmination of the year for our children’s ministry, so we adapt our liturgy to mimic what they would be doing in the Atrium on this day. It’ll be more participatory, more visual, more tactile. We’ll also invite the children to help lead us in worship as a living example of the opening words of the Pentecost liturgy: “your sons and daughters shall prophesy.” It’s one of my favorite days of the church year — wild and wondrous and a little weird in the best possible way.

One of my theology professors called the Holy Spirit the “shy member of the Trinity.” He didn’t mean “shy” in the sense that the Spirit’s work is always quiet and hidden (though it often is). The Spirit is often noisy, surprising, and unexpected; on Sunday we will read of a mighty rushing wind and tongues of fire and miraculous acts of spontaneous translation.

Instead, the Spirit is “shy” in the sense that he resists being the center of attention; his essence is always turned outward, away from himself. The Holy Spirit exists eternally to draw our gaze toward the Father and the Son, to draw our hearts into the love shared within the Trinity, and to draw our lives out into the world, empowered to share that love with others.

And so there’s an outward and inward movement to the Spirit in our lives. We receive the Spirit inwardly as God’s presence dwells within us. In this inward movement, we grow in sensitivity to God’s loving voice and presence and direction — primarily through scripture and prayer.

But this inward movement of the Spirit is not an end to itself. The Spirit is “shy”; he doesn’t want to be hoarded, basked in, focused on, or contained. The Spirit’s movement is always overflowing outward. And so our inward experience of the Spirit is meant to overflow outward into the world as we are empowered by God for lives of loving service. Sometimes (often) that loving service will look quiet and ordinary; sometimes it will look wild and unexpected. The Spirit’s gifts are endlessly creative, diverse, and contextual for the lives we live. What joy!

On Sunday, we will have an opportunity to reflect on — and participate in — both this inward and outward movement of the Spirit. We will pray for an inward receiving of spiritual gifts by lighting candles. And we will hear stories of how the Spirit is empowering God’s work in the world through our outreach partner, Five Talents. And then we will feast!

It will be wild and wondrous and a little weird in the best possible way. I can’t wait — see you then!

With love,

Amy

p.s. Quick livestream update: as you may know, we have paused our livestream to make some needed upgrades. We'd hoped this pause would just be a few weeks, but it has stretched much longer (it turns out that tariffs and wars are making it extremely hard to get long XLR cables in a timely fashion!). We apologize for this extended delay and we are hoping to resume livestreaming by mid-June — just in time for summer vacation church!