Today, we conclude that exploration as we arrive at Pentecost.
The day the Spirit came—not quietly or politely—but in wind and flame. A day when boundaries fell away, and people spoke across difference. A day when something wild and holy swept through a gathering and changed everything.
That phrase stood out to me as I pondered this was, “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.”
I have often read the verse and thought only of human flesh—young and old, women and men, enslaved and free. And, of course, that is true. But, in light of the retreat and our time spent exploring animal kinship, I now fine myself reading it differently — all flesh. All flesh must include fish and birds, insects and rodents, horses and dogs,. That’s much broader than we usually allow. If the Spirit was poured out on all flesh, then perhaps Pentecost wasn’t just a moment for humanity—it was a moment for the Earth.
The Celts spoke of the Holy Spirit as the Wild Goose — not the soft dove of with gentle coos — but a honking, flapping, messy, untamable bird. That image makes sense to me. Maybe the wind that filled the upper room wasn’t meant to be domestic, but to be wild and free.
The Spirit doesn’t simply comfort. It disrupts. It changes the way we speak, the way we listen, the way we live.
And hopefully it changes the way we relate to the other lives who share this Earth with us.
In our retreat sessions, we spoke of Francis and the Celtic saints—Brigid, Cuthbert, Kevin, Columba and Ita who related to animals not as symbols or resources, but as companions. Brother Wolf, Sister Dove, otters who warm a saint’s feet, blackbirds who nest in a monk’s outstretched hand. Each of these saints understood that creation was not beneath us but beside us.
I wonder, on Pentecost, when people began speaking in new languages, if the Spirit which was poured out on all flesh was also teaching the new language of creature kinship. Maybe the Spirit is still doing that, still teaching the new language of the earth.
In Genesis, Adam names the animals. Sometimes naming can become possession and we’ve seen the damage that does — dominion, ownership, power and lack of caring.
In the Celtic tradition, to name is to honour. Not to control, but to bless. To speak a creature’s name with reverence is to acknowledge that it, too, bears the breath of God.
What if Pentecost is a new Genesis? A new breath sweeping the earth. A new naming born not of dominion, but of kinship.
I think the Spirit is still being poured out on all flesh. And the Earth still waits—not for us to dominate it, but for us to listen to the language of the more-than-human world., to speak rightly back to it, to live as kin with it and finding true communion in the companionship of all flesh.
