Lush Welcome

This spring's rains have made the bushes and trees grow more than usual.  It  feels like they are reaching out to embrace me.  This entrance to my neighborhood is especially welcoming.
I am coming along very well after a winter having trouble with my breathing.  I am often not thinking very deeply though and have little to post here.

The Alpha and the Omega

I made my yearly retreat last week with six other priests in my support group.  We used Richard Rohr's The Universal Christ to help us reflect and share.  A reflection I had: Once the Father raises Jesus from the dead, our humanity enters into divinity and becomes universal as the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One.  I imagined Jesus at the moment of the Resurrection, no longer with the limits he had while on earth with us, spreading back to the Big Bang and forward to our distant future, "the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End."

Pneuma

Pleura was the Greek name the early Christians gave to the Spirit.  It also means air, breath, and wind.
Like air, the Spirit is all around us and within us, closer to us than we are to ourselves.
Like breath, the Spirit enters us and enables us to speak and and sing with energy and enthusiasm.
Like the wind which we cannot see, the Spirit is gentle as a breeze, forceful as a tornado, delightful as wind in our sails gliding us through life effortlessly in God's love.