Meditations from Zion

How many times have people casually said they can’t be with you, but “I’ll be with you in spirit.” Isn’t that just a nice way to say they’ll be thinking about you? But what if there is more? What if there is potential for power there?

I Corinthians 5:3a
As for my attitude, though I am absent [from you] in body, I am present in spirit, . . .

This section of I Corinthians is not easy for me. It’s a whole mess about sexual sin and “casting the sinner out” of the fellowship for sexual immorality and “handing him over to Satan.” Whoa! I just can’t begin to write about this in any reasonable way.

Instead, I want to consider the possibilities of power that come with being somewhere “in spirit.” Jesus is actually with us “in spirit.” This is not some off hand or incidental description. The presence of the Holy Spirit on earth is transformational. It is the strength of the Spirit that teaches, counsels, and guides us.

Paul implies that his relationship to the believers in Corinth bring his spirit in their midst as well. It is sharing the essence of a person and invoking him/her through ideas, words, and thought.

I imagine my own spirit a little like a pomegranate, with its many, many seeds. Can I give one seed of my spirit to another, to a group, to a place, where I would like to be present? Will my spirit seed make a difference?

I think of all the places I have lived and all the people I have known, paths that have intersected over the years. When it was time to say goodbye, could I consciously leave some small part of myself with them, in love?

In the same way that a parent can divide her heart to love all of her children, no matter how many, so can the spirit divide and divide again. When we give of ourselves in that way, there is actually a multiplication that happens (a paradox). Like a tree that is pruned and more branches grow, so is the deposit of our spirit seeds with others.

Today, I want to think about “being with you in spirit,” being with my kids, in spirit, my husband, my friends, my brother in Denver, my aunt in Germany, my half-sister in Tallinn.

I send them out my spirit like a milkweed seed, lightly and lovingly.

[Special thanks to Amy Lamb for use of her photograph, Milkweed Seed Pod.)]