Like eagles

Looking back to Pentecost as we wend our way through Trinity.

I first began drafting this piece at an MFA residency (it was originally an exercise in writing after the style of Christina Rossetti in Time Flies). I later modified it into a blog post for Pentecost week, and shared it with my parish community on our church blog.

I’m a number of weeks too late to share this as a Pentecost piece. But I want to post it anyway because we are several weeks into Trinity now, and if there’s ever a season when we need a reminder that the Comfort of the Spirit is always present, it’s Trinity — this season focused on the long life of prayer, in which we’re constantly faced with our inconstancy, impatience, and need.

I also find it helpful to remember, each year, that Trinity is immediately preceded by the eight days of the Pentecost feast. The Church was wise in crafting this tradition: it is a yearly reminder that while we first celebrate the revelation of the Holy Spirit descended in glory, and are baptized by the fire of His presence, we are then immediately called into the wilderness of our prayer. (Not unlike Christ after His baptism, no?)

The Spirit is with us, dwelling inside us, and the revelation holds true, but our practice of perceiving His presence happens over a lengthy, almost unbearable period of time. Thus, in Trinity, our faith is perhaps primarily characterized by persistence and humility. We must practice resilience and remain humble enough to accept our weakness when it rises. We must learn to let the Spirit be our strength, and to work as He wills in our lives.

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Once, as a day fell into evening on the edge of the Salish Sea, I sat under a cold wind and watched sunlight burn pink over the horizon. A pale haze made the Olympic Range look ghostly. Five minutes into my solitary reflection, I was startled by movement—an enormous bald eagle, who had been resting on the rough asphalt of an old basketball court, stirred. I watched as it stepped a few paces forward and raised its wings, then flew over the field past a friend of mine, who was wending her way back to our camp cabin. The eagle alighted above her on an old barracks roof and proceeded to survey the scene.

I wondered, as I watched my friend and saw the eagle rise over her path, whether she had noticed his benedictive flight. I hoped she had. I knew she was suffering and weary in spirit.

I am reminded by this memory of Isaiah’s famous simile—those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

I have often heard this verse quoted as a way to undercut or minimize the necessity of contending with fatigue or emptiness. But in watching that eagle, who stirred from his stillness on the court and rose only to pause a moment later, it occurred to me that even the eagle must take his rest.

The verse I have quoted above closes Isaiah 40, a chapter that opens with a commanding exhortation from God that Israel take comfort in His work: “Comfort, yes, comfort my people! … Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her, that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned.”

The chapter goes on like this for many verses, weaving triumphant declarations of the LORD’s victory over sin, death, and suffering with startlingly honest assertions regarding the futility and brevity of human life—for example, verses seven and eight: “All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, and the flower fades, because the breath of the LORD blows upon it.”

In our historical moment, we are perhaps overly-accustomed to expecting “comfort” to arrive in the form of “consolation”—that is, as a solution or reprieve from suffering that will enable us to get up off our feet, stop being (or feeling) weak, and keep “fighting the good fight.” But Isaiah 40 compels us to reconsider the nature of comfort. This chapter relentlessly contrasts the absolute frailty of the human condition with the overwhelming, absolute power of the Creator God who cannot be compared to any created thing. Per verse 24, all God needs to do is breathe on the princes and the nations “and they will wither, and the whirlwind will take them away like stubble.” This, too, is the God who, at the chapter’s outset, calls his people to take comfort in his vanquishing, victorious power.

The chapter suggests we are meant to take comfort in God’s existence, the magnitude and activity of His power (perhaps especially on behalf of those who trust Him), and nothing else. The comforted one is she who has seen this reality—has seen that God, the One who “has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand,” chooses to apply His inestimable strength to empowering and strengthening her. Per Isaiah 40, the proper response of the comforted one is not to try to escape suffering, solve the world’s problems, or prove how strong she is. Instead, she ought to “bring good tidings, and lift up [her] voice with strength.” (Sometimes, of course, being the bearer of God’s good tidings can get the message-bearer killed—but the call remains the same, and having been comforted by the strength of the LORD, she will have what she needs to persevere.)

Tomorrow is the Feast of Pentecost, which means we are, as a community, on the cusp of receiving the Spirit—that Breath of God who can raze the nations with a single exhalation—into our lives again, in a new way. We cannot know specifically how He, the Comforter, will choose to enliven and strengthen us. But we can trust that He will, and we can make ourselves ready to say yes to however He wills to make His comfort known.

In the meantime, I cannot shake the thought of the eagle I witnessed on the edge of the Salish Sea. Who can know what errands he was about that evening? But when I saw him, I saw that his flight did not initially lead to larger and grander flight. The first thing he did after rising on the strength of his great wings was find another place to pause and receive peace.

As we run in the way of Comfort, we will inevitably faint and grow weary, but the LORD never does. The witness of that eagle suggests that when we collide with our limitations, it is wise not to keep “pushing through.” Instead it is good to pause, receive rest and peace, survey the scene, and consider where the Comforter is at work in us, through us, and in the world on our behalf—and to trust that even if we cannot discern His work, He is advocating on our behalf.