Musical Rosary #13: Descent of the Holy Spirit

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem. At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd, but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language.

Kind of a stretch today, but the Holy Spirit calls us together and guides us when we act as a Christian community. Pentecost is a story of diversity within unity: the wildly varied languages which express a common call from God, like the many weird vocations by which we serve that same God.

And I often talk about how we need a diversity of metaphors. The spirituality of humiliation and submission, which is super Twelve-Steppy and which I personally respond to really strongly, is not everyone’s spirituality and doesn’t have to be everyone’s spirituality. It works for me partly due to my temperament, and partly because I’ve been spoiled and privileged all my life, so I generally need humbling rather than supporting. People who have had their noses rubbed in their humiliation and submission all their lives may need a different approach–I need Susan Sontag to tell me to have fewer opinions and mouth off about them less, but lots of people need encouragement to accept and express their perspectives. Christ the Liberator is as real as Christ the King.

So uh, here’s a tale of collective action? My favorite Chumbawamba song, because like any good Catholic I love anarchist anti-Communism; this song is about Hungarians in 1956 attacking their local Stalin statue, inscribed on its base (I may have the phrasing slightly wrong), ERECTED BY A GRATEFUL PEOPLE.