A Sheer Beatitude of Yes

Yes to One is often No to Another

The season of Pentecost is the season of “yes.” Out of her abundance the Holy Spirit says “yes” to the desires and longings of our hearts. There is so much to give and so much to receive—the “perfection of perfection”—as Hardy and Ford muse in their volume Jubilate.

The challenge we face in the receiving of blessings is that our “yes” may be a “no” to someone else—or their “yes” becomes my “no.” I cry out, “Why not Me?” but so do the masses of humanity. The dilemma of our present Pentecost is that the limited opportunities of our “now” pours a bit of wetness on the receiving of the heavenly manna. On the upper plane Pentecost abounds as a wild thunderstorm but on the lower echelons the heavenly torrent seems as a gentle mist. Can we keep looking up in faith rather than give into the momentary thrill of lashing out in disappointment and rage? Can we muster the interior tenacity to silently wait upon the celestial rains that will one day fall?

The poet Jessica Powers wrestles with this contrapuntal tension as she pens her poem Yes:

Yes to me is often no to another

Here walks my grief and here has often been

My peak of anguish….

heaven for me will be an infinite

flowering of one species a measureless sheer

beatitude of yes.

In our now we may hear only a thunderous no. But a day surely is coming (perhaps sooner than we think) when Pentecost will shower down upon our heads a great outpouring —a sheer beatitude of yes.