Grace Cathedral

There’s an immediate connection and sense of being welcomed when someone speaks your own language to you when you’re far from home. The Spirit, in our readings today, seeks us where we are and as we are—using that jolt of unexpected hospitality to call forth and celebrate our array of slumbering gifts.

That’s a wonderful thing to contemplate, as we welcome the families of our baptisands today. We don’t know what dreams and visions your daughters and sons will prophesy in the years ahead, but we know that resting within them are the seeds of so many amazing things. God will invite them to both inhabit their full selves and to step beyond the limits of their selves; the invitation will be both fiery and tender.

For the Spirit’s gift is a roar of wind to propel us out of categories and labels, past boundaries and isolation, into a community dedicated to life, that welcomes and nourishes the gifts we can give each other. Each of us, in our own particularity, is vital to the flourishing of the whole. Let us look for that powerful and loving invitation each day, and respond to it gladly in our own tongues.