The Spirit, after all, is not housebroken

Reflections on Wisdom, Wonder, and Learning to See

My own journey has been shaped by three lifelong companions: the visual arts, theology, and philosophy. Each has taught me to see the world differently. Each has invited me to pay closer attention. Together, they have convinced me that the spiritual life is less about collecting certainty than about learning to see with greater clarity, compassion, and wonder.

More than twenty-five centuries ago, Siddhartha Gautama offered these words:

Don't believe anything simply because someone else tells you. Don't believe it because it is written in ancient books, because everyone says it is true, or because a teacher proclaims it. Instead, discover for yourself what leads to compassion, wisdom, and the well-being of yourself and others. Let your own experience become your guide.

That may seem like an unusual quotation coming from a Christian minister. But then again, Scripture tells us that Spirit blows wherever it chooses. The Hebrew word ruach means both wind and Spirit. Jesus' words remind us that the Spirit cannot be possessed, managed, or controlled. Wisdom has always had a habit of arriving from unexpected places. The Holy Spirit is wonderfully unconcerned with our categories.

One of the great temptations in religion is to assume that someone else will do our seeing for us—that if we simply listen carefully enough, someone in a pulpit will eventually hand us the truth we've been searching for. I suspect many churches unintentionally encourage that expectation. Yet I wonder if Jesus had something far more interesting in mind.

Again and again, Jesus invited people not merely to believe, but to see. To pay attention. To discern. To notice where love was already taking root. To discover the Beloved Community already emerging in their midst. 

I don't believe Jesus wanted disciples who simply repeated what they had been told. I believe he wanted people whose hearts had awakened—people who learned to trust the quiet movement of God's Spirit within them and who accepted responsibility for their own lives, their own choices, and their own spiritual growth. Faith, at its best, is not passive agreement. It is an active, lifelong practice of paying attention.

That kind of awakening finds nourishment not only on Sunday morning, but also in poetry and pastels, in music and pottery, in friendship and grief, in forests after the rain, in the laughter of children, and in the astonishing beauty of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond. The world itself becomes a sanctuary. Every encounter becomes a potential teacher.

Have you ever watched a very young child discover something utterly ordinary? A patch of sunlight spilling across the kitchen floor. A tiny insect making its way through the grass. The graceful curve of a spoon. They point. They laugh. They giggle. They are completely captivated.

Children are born contemplatives.  They haven't yet learned to overlook the ordinary. They don't divide the world into sacred and secular. Everything is worthy of their attention.

Somewhere along the way, many of us lose that capacity. Our vision narrows. We become consumed by deadlines, responsibilities, opinions, and glowing screens. We hurry past the very moments that might have healed us. We stop noticing the quiet miracles unfolding all around us.

Perhaps one of the deepest spiritual practices is simply learning to reclaim a childlike curiosity.

As clergy, we can sometimes be tempted to speak as though we've already digested all the wisdom there is to know. Yet every sermon worth preaching should leave room for mystery, and every teacher should remain a student. The moment we imagine we've captured God completely is probably the moment we've stopped paying attention.

The wisdom of the Christian tradition has shaped my life profoundly, and I treasure it. The life and teachings of Jesus continue to orient my own understanding of reality. But I have also found echoes of God's truth far beyond the walls of the church.  I hear it in the Hebrew prophets.  I hear it in the compassion of the Buddha and the wisdom of Lao Tzu.  I hear it in the poetry of Mary Oliver and Rumi. I hear it in artists, musicians, scientists, rabbis, imams, monks, neighbors, children, and people who may never set foot inside a church.  And I see it in the photography of Sally Mann and Carrie Mae Weems.

Whenever I encounter something that leads toward greater love, deeper compassion, wider justice, deeper joy, and fuller life, I find myself paying attention. Because, in my experience, that is what the Good News always does.  It makes us kinder.  More humble.  More fearless.  More awake.  More deeply alive.

And every now and then, it catches me completely by surprise.  Like that child pointing toward a beam of morning light.  It makes me smile.  Sometimes it even makes me giggle.

If every church or catheral on earth disappeared tomorrow, I believe ruach—the breath of God—would still move through every human heart, whisper through every forest, dance across every ocean, sing through every mountain valley, and shimmer among the stars.

The Holy One has never been confined to our buildings, our doctrines, or our denominations.  The Spirit, after all, is not housebroken.  It refuses to stay where we put it.  It slips through stained-glass windows and wanders into art studios, libraries,  hospitals, classrooms, forests, kitchens, and seashores.  It laughs with children.  It whispers through poets and scientists.  It surprises artists.  It comforts the grieving.  It unsettles the comfortable.  It speaks through strangers.  It has always been gloriously free.

Our task, then, is not to cage the Spirit but to recognize its movement. To become people who pay attention. To become people who cultivate wonder. To become people who trust that God is still speaking—not only through Scripture and the Church, precious as they are, but through the whole astonishing, beautiful, broken world.

May we become the kind of people who are willing to point, smile, and perhaps even giggle when grace unexpectedly appears.  We simply keep learning new ways to notice.  And that, to me, is good news at its very best.