Yesterday afternoon my daughter and I went to St. Benedict’s Monastery to walk/pray the labyrinth. The labyrinth there is definitely unassuming, its beginning marked by a small arch trellis such as you might find in any garden centre, and its circling path cut by a narrow lawnmower into a low-grass field. There’s no signage, and even a short distance away the place seems only a stretch of green bracketed by trees, set beside a bricked patio-like spot designed for contemplation, complete with chairs and a small statue of Mary, lying between the monastery and the Red River.

The day was pleasantly warm without being hot, but it was windy. All day the wind had been loosening elm seeds upon us like rain, swirling them into piles in front of the door and on our deck and any other place they could find to gather. Once, while I stood on the front porch, the wind also brought me the sweet fragrance of lilacs from somewhere down the street. 

But walking the labyrinth, I didn’t notice the wind. Not at first, at least. In that relatively sheltered spot, all seemed calm. And then I heard it, strong and unmistakable in the tops of the trees. Ah, yes, of course, the wind. A reminder of the vigorous, comforting sound that marked the coming of the Spirit and the birth of the church, which we celebrated yesterday, on the Day of Pentecost. A reminder of the words spoken to Nicodemus: “The wind blows wherever it pleases; you hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. That is how it is with all who are born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). Those words further resonating with Jesus’ parting words, pre-Pentecost, “It is not for you to know times or dates that the Father has decided…”

The title of our pastor’s sermon in the morning was “Other people’s languages.” It focussed on how the transformation of the Spirit opens us to hearing and understanding others, especially in contexts in which we talk “past” one another. Pentecost reverses Babel, our pastor said, not by reducing us to fewer languages, or to one, but by enlarging us to more in our ability to speak and understand.

Recently, in a blog post titled “A Hermeneutic of Generosity,” Debra Dean Murphy spoke of the need for more than politeness to bridge the conversational polarities we find ourselves in as persons, churches, and cultures. Needed, she suggests, is “curiosity” and “compassion” (both of which, it occurs to me, characterize the exchange between Jesus and Nicodemus), as well as truth-telling (which surely characterizes Peter’s sermon at Pentecost). A hermeneutic of generosity, she says, interprets what others say or intend “in a favorable light.” Perhaps it even interprets so that, as in the Acts 2 account, we hear declared “the wonders of God.”

I’ve been mulling on this, thinking of the many “languages” I speak or understand poorly, or not at all, and of the unfavorable interpretations I’m so quick to place on the words of someone with whom I disagree. Thinking of how the images given us for Spirit involve both unknowing (mystery) and knowing (sound), remembering how the wind played above the grass and its turns of prayer, and how it scatters and stacks up seeds. How it carries the scent of lilacs.