The dance of the Spirit

This reading explores the role of the Holy Spirit in God's creation of the world. Some might be suprised to see the Spirit described in the feminine, and while you might want to change this, you are invited to find out why. While we often refer to God in the masculine, in reality God is genderless - the text of Genesis tells us that when humanity was made in God's image, we were made male and female. In the Old Testament, the word 'Sophia' is often used to describe God's wisdom, in fact 'Sophia' is often portrayed as a person. Sophia is a feminine word, often seen as paralleling the masculine 'logos' in the New Testament, which is used to describe 'the Word' who became flesh as Jesus.




Before anything else existed,
Even before time,
For time itself had yet to become,
The Spirit waited,
Listening, poised and alert,
Ready to dance across the waters of chaos
At the Creator’s will and bidding.

For hers is the task of making the mind of the Creator known,
Plumbing the depths of Divine wisdom;
Exploring timeless mysteries;
Hearing the whispers of eternity,
Then planting its truths,
In mortal consciousness and intuition.

And the will of the Creator
Was that there should be light.
And so she danced
With vivid strands of Red and Orange,
Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet,
Weaving them together,
Each uniquely present
Yet also hidden
By the pure white brilliance
That was their combining.

And in the eye of the creator,
Were endless galaxies,
And in one and the same moment,
The tiniest atom and cell.
And so she leapt across the seas of space,
Darting between a million stars,
While countless gestures and intricate twists,
Defined their minutest detail.

And wherever her feet landed,
Order and beauty
Subdued the chaos of the firmament.
As she gathered and tamed the waters,
And painted the colours of sky,
Her hands traced the outline
Of a thousand circles,
That each became the orbit of a restless planet,
For as long as time would prevail.

And it all became
Because the Spirit danced,
In a hold of perfect Unison
With the Creator’s mind and purpose.
Flocks of birds soared across the waiting skies,
Shoals of fish twisted and darted in the teaming waters,
Buds became leaves, then flowers then fruit,
And the beasts of the earth revelled in its sweetness.

And in his vast and generous imagination,
The creator conceived their own likeness
An Imprint of flesh
That he might even one day inhabit.
And so the Spirit breathed herself
Into the dust of the earth,
And mortals danced alongside her.

And so the mind of the Creator was revealed,
Not in statute or proposition
Or expressed through mere word,
But expounded in that which could be touched and tasted,
Its fragrance smelled;
Its symphonies heard;
Its beauty beheld.

And then in the peae of its completion,
The Creator chose not to imagine,
For his will was to simply behold
And revel in that which the Spirit’s dance had crafted.
And as her rhythms and movements
Echoed and pulsed through the vistas of the Universe,
The simple song of creation
Declared that it was good.

And for those who will see and listen,
The Spirit still dances in the midst of creation
That is a fallen shadow,
Yet still laced with beauty, hope and possibility.
And the mind of the creator,
Is to build a new creation,
With first-fruits of hope.
A Kingdom come,
And a Kingdom becoming,
That bids us dance
To its rhythms and melodies forever.



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