Paradoxical, elusive, uncontrollable, absolutely free (M. Shawn Copeland)

   In Hebrew, ruah denotes spirit, breath, wind and is almost always connected with the life-giving attribute of God. Spirit-ruah is and remains paradoxical, elusive, uncontrollable, absolutely free. The Spirit, like the wind, blows where and when and how the Spirit so chooses (after John 3:8). 

   The French theologian Louis-Marie Chauvet suggests that, “The Spirit is God Different…. [A]t the same time, [the Spirit] is God closest to humankind, to the point of inscribing God’s very self into our corporality in order to divinize it.” If Spirit God Different inscribes the Divine Self into (or divinizes) our human bodies, integrates and embraces all God’s human creatures, then affirmation and embrace of embodied or fleshly human difference is the mission of Spirit God Different. Indeed, from the beginning, Spirit God Different moves among all God’s human creatures––drawing us together, inspiring, prompting, prodding, exhorting, reproving, animating, empowering us to defy disunity and division, rupture and separation. 

   At Pentecost, Spirit God Different publicly performs and ratifies the Triune God’s respect and love of our embodied, fleshly human differences. At Pentecost, Spirit God Different missions us to live out the command of Jesus to ‘love one another.’ Spirit God Different opens us, teaches us to live in and live out active compassionate, loving solidarity with those whom our society chooses to oppress––those whom our society exploits and alienates, marginalizes and dominates, rejects and denies, attacks and assaults, represses and crushes, murders and destroys.

   By creating these blessed fleshly differences, Spirit God Different nudges us to reach out to one another, to communicate, to meet one another, to enjoy one another, to act in love for and with one another. Spirit God Different urges us to defend and protect one another from oppression and violence of body and soul, mind and heart; to respect and honor, welcome and embrace one another in all our fleshly difference––for our shining and beautiful fleshly differing bodies are dwelling places of Spirit God Different. 

--M. Shawn Copeland 

Image source: https://worthilymagnify.com/2011/10/18/the-holy-spirit-the-very-breath-of-god-in-our-very-midst/
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