In the Midst

Pentecost Sunday in the Grand Canyon

You may wonder how, this past Pentecost Sunday, I found myself absolutely alone, sitting in the dirt two-thirds of the way down the Grand Canyon with nothing but a Ziploc bag of lightly salted almonds and half of a bottle of water. Well, the truth of the matter is, I wasn’t actually alone at all. One squirrel in particular was loath to leave my side for my entire three hour stay, scrambling to confiscate my almond bag at the slightest break in my vigil. While I didn’t have quite sufficient generosity to share my rations, I also didn’t have the heart to turn him away. And this interaction was observed by a very passive deer, who didn’t need any almonds but simply wanted to lounge in the shade nearby and occasionally munch on some grass.

“What better way to celebrate Pentecost Sunday,” Ava had jubilantly exclaimed that morning over our shared bowl of microwaved oatmeal, “than to hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back up before the sun sets!” Highly rational and cautious person that I am, I explained that I did not perceive any connective thread between these two things, nor the great appeal of such a strenuous voluntary endeavor (especially since I was still recovering from a different 7-hour canyon hike earlier in the week). We agreed, therefore, that I would only hike to the Havasupai Gardens partway down the canyon while she continued (with my phone, our food, and enough electrolyte packets to hydrate the salt flats of Utah) all the way to the Colorado River at the very bottom. Little did I know that this would indeed prove to be the best possible way to celebrate Pentecost Sunday.

As I sat there alone in the dirt two thirds of the way down the Grand Canyon, consorting with all manner of desert creatures and plants, I could not help but ponder the Hebrew word תָּוֶךְ (tavek), which is usually translated at “midst” or “among.” This was the first stretch of solitude I had experienced since beginning my desert wanderings with Ava about two weeks earlier, and I was afraid that the loneliness would be weighty. But in fact there are few times in my existence when I have felt so absolutely encompassed by life. Not only was I cohabiting the shade with my new mammalian friends, but the trees waving overhead whispered all sorts of interesting things, and the nearby stream trickled jovially, with dragonflies and water striders darting every which way on the surface. The closer I looked and the stiller I stayed, the more and more life I noticed, from the orderly configurations of ant regiments on their various missions to the occasional distant screeches of the infamous canyon raptors.

Then I considered the vast walls of the canyon reaching up and up on every side, which in some sense contained the most life of all –stripes, crags, and outcroppings keeping record of countless events and ecosystems stretching back in time millions of years. Indeed, from the water to the trees to the rocks to the ants, I was totally surrounded by the fruit of God’s imagination, this ancient world of strange and beautiful created things that he sustains by his very Spirit. Not only was I not alone, I was actually right בְּת֣וֹךְ (in the midst of) God himself, who was actively revealing his heart and his character to me through his creation.

I remembered, then, that it was Pentecost Sunday, and that this is the day in which we celebrate the reality that not only do we live in the midst of God, but now God, in the person of the Holy Spirit, lives in the midst of us. Indeed, on the first day of Pentecost, when the Spirit fell and everyone started speaking in unknown tongues, Peter explained to the baffled crowd that “these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy’” (Acts 2). By quoting Joel’s prophecy from almost a century earlier, Peter highlighted God’s ongoing preparation of humanity to become living vessels of his Spirit. From the very beginning, we were designed to live dependent on his power and attuned to his activity in and through us.

Now, another significant Hebrew word you should know is מִשְׁכָּן (mishkan), which is usually translated as “tabernacle” or “dwelling place” and communicates the idea of taking up lasting residence in the midst of something else. We are most familiar with this idea from the story of the literal tabernacle which God instructs Moses how to build in Exodus 25, promising that if the Israelites fashion this sanctuary for him, then he will shakan (the verb iteration of mishkan) among them.

This is the same language, however, that John uses to describe how the Word became flesh and “tabernacled” among us (ἐσκήνωσεν), embodying the Father’s heart for all of humanity (John 1:14) and by his life, death, resurrection and ascension, making a way for the Holy Spirit to “tabernacle” within us, permanently. As Jesus promised his disciples upon his departure from this world, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you” (John 14:16-17). Because of Pentecost, we now can each become a mishkan in which the Holy Spirit takes up lasting residence.

As I reflect on these things from back home in the Alabama mundane, I can’t help but consider the relevance of Saint Patrick’s breastplate prayer, which has been the lockscreen of my phone ever since a lady at church prayed it over me and Ava before we set off for the summer:

Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

I pray it again for the hundredth time, tuning my heart to the reality that the very Spirit of Christ dwells in the midst of me. Even as my day of Canyon Pentecost is already fading into the realm of foggy summer nostalgia, I am confident that the gift of Pentecost will only become more real to me as time goes on.

But most importantly, you should know that, defying all odds (and the warnings of multiple concerned park rangers), Ava did make it all the way down to the Colorado River, and we got back to the rim just as the stars were starting to come out.