{"id":5296,"date":"2020-06-01T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-01T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/?p=5296"},"modified":"2020-05-31T07:56:17","modified_gmt":"2020-05-31T11:56:17","slug":"the-wild-goose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/the-wild-goose\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wild Goose"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<iframe title=\"The Wild Goose 6\/1\/20\" height=\"122\" width=\"100%\" style=\"border: none;\" scrolling=\"no\" data-name=\"pb-iframe-player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/media\/player\/csa5g-de436c?from=yiiadmin&#038;download=1&#038;version=1&#038;skin=1&#038;btn-skin=107&#038;auto=0&#038;share=1&#038;fonts=Helvetica&#038;download=1&#038;rtl=0&#038;pbad=1\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Yesterday was Pentecost Sunday, the day when the Holy Spirit descended on the Early Church as tongues of fire. The Holy Spirit is often pictured as a dove. But&nbsp;<\/strong><strong>Celtic Christians chose, not the dove, but the wild goose as a symbol representing the&nbsp;Holy&nbsp;Spirit. It sounds strange to us, but it has a long tradition in Ireland.<\/strong><br><br><em>While the Roman Church imagined the&nbsp;Holy&nbsp;Spirit&nbsp;in the form&nbsp;of&nbsp;a peaceful, graceful dove, the Ancient Celts understood the&nbsp;Holy&nbsp;Spirit&nbsp;to be like a wild goose.&nbsp;<\/em>When you hear&nbsp;of&nbsp;the&nbsp;Spirit&nbsp;descending like a heavenly dove on you, you hear harps and strings softly playing and get a peaceful feeling. The image&nbsp;of&nbsp;the&nbsp;Holy&nbsp;Spirit&nbsp;as a dove has become so familiar and domesticated an image that we pay little attention to the dove.&nbsp;<br><br><strong><em>The image&nbsp;of&nbsp;a wild goose descending upon you is a different matter altogether. A wild goose is one noisy, bothersome bird. I like this image&nbsp;of&nbsp;the&nbsp;Holy Spirit&nbsp;as a wild goose because it jars us out&nbsp;of&nbsp;our complacency. We need such an image to correct our overly safe and overly sweet image&nbsp;of&nbsp;the&nbsp;Spirit. How many times can you sing \u201cCome Holy Ghost, Creator blest, and in our hearts take up thy rest.\u201d without your blood sugar reaching diabetic levels?<br><\/em><\/strong><br><em>When the&nbsp;Spirit&nbsp;comes in the Bible, it never seems to be sweet or safe. God&#8217;s&nbsp;Spirit&nbsp;called the prophets to speak to Israel in words that were bold and sometimes dangerous. Ezekiel saw a vision&nbsp;of&nbsp;God&#8217;s&nbsp;Spirit&nbsp;blowing through a valley&nbsp;of&nbsp;dry bones and bringing them to life.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>John the Baptist dressed in camel&#8217;s hair and eating wild locusts proclaimed, &#8220;I baptize you with water but he who comes after me will baptize you with the&nbsp;Holy&nbsp;Spirit&nbsp;and with fire.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Neither safe nor tame, the\u00a0Spirit\u00a0inspired Saint Paul to proclaim, &#8220;There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all\u00a0of\u00a0you are one in Christ Jesus.\u201d (Galatians 3:28).<br><br><strong>It was this wild goose that Jesus referred to when he preached his first sermon and quoted Isaiah, saying, <em>&#8220;For the\u00a0Spirit\u00a0of\u00a0the Lord is upon me for he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, and recovering\u00a0of\u00a0sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year\u00a0of\u00a0God&#8217;s favor&#8221;.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong> (Luke 4:18)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thanks to Mickey Anders for these thoughts.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How has the Holy Spirit enlivened you this Pentecost Monday and jarred you out of the complacency that has set in during the past three months due to the coronavirus?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday was Pentecost Sunday, the day when the Holy Spirit descended on the Early Church as tongues of fire. The Holy Spirit is often pictured as a dove. But&nbsp;Celtic Christians chose, not the dove, but the wild goose as a symbol representing the&nbsp;Holy&nbsp;Spirit. It sounds strange to us, but it has a long tradition in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5297,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"qubely_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wild-Goose.png",208,137,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wild-Goose.png",208,137,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wild-Goose.png",208,137,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wild-Goose-150x137.png",150,137,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wild-Goose.png",208,137,false],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wild-Goose.png",208,137,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wild-Goose.png",208,137,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wild-Goose.png",208,137,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wild-Goose.png",208,137,false],"ocean-thumb-m":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wild-Goose.png",208,137,false],"ocean-thumb-ml":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wild-Goose.png",208,137,false],"ocean-thumb-l":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wild-Goose.png",208,137,false],"qubely_landscape":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wild-Goose.png",208,137,false],"qubely_portrait":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wild-Goose.png",208,137,false],"qubely_thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wild-Goose-140x100.png",140,100,true],"rpwe-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wild-Goose-45x45.png",45,45,true]},"qubely_author":{"display_name":"Medard Laz","author_link":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/author\/medlaz\/"},"qubely_comment":0,"qubely_category":"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/category\/daily-treats\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Daily Treats<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"Yesterday was Pentecost Sunday, the day when the Holy Spirit descended on the Early Church as tongues of fire. The Holy Spirit is often pictured as a dove. But&nbsp;Celtic Christians chose, not the dove, but the wild goose as a symbol representing the&nbsp;Holy&nbsp;Spirit. It sounds strange to us, but it has a long tradition in&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5296"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}