“Pentecostal Hour” by Mark DeBolt
No zephyr soft
but cyclone strong
bore thoughts aloft
in windy song.
No flicker mild
but flames of red
danced hot and wild
upon each head.
And so fierce was
our thundering word
in languages
of all who heard,
all knew it meant
the Spirit’s power.
This was our Pent-
ecostal hour.
“Pentecost Villanellette” by Mark DeBolt
Not as a dove the Holy Spirit came
to the disciples gathered in a room,
but as a violent wind and tongues of flame.
A cyclone roared the ineffable name
as fire on each blushing brow did bloom.
Not as a dove the Holy Spirit came
to give sight to the blind and heal the lame
and raise the dead and dispel error’s gloom,
but as a violent wind and tongues of flame.
The Breath of God is anything but tame.
Who dally with it dally with their doom.
Not as a dove the Holy Spirit came,
but as a violent wind and tongues of flame.
These poems are published in For the Mystic Harmony: Collected Poems 1997–2011 by Mark DeBolt and are used by permission of the author.
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This Sunday Christians will celebrate Pentecost, the historic giving of the Holy Spirit to all believers in Jesus Christ and thus the birthday of the church.
Before it was the name of a Christian holiday, Pentecost (Heb. Shavuot) was celebrated annually by the Jewish people in honor of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. Jews still celebrate it today, fifty days after Passover—hence the name Pentecost (“pente” = five). (Appropriately, Christian Pentecost occurs fifty days after Easter.) Because of the importance of the feast, ancient Jews traveled from all over the known world to their religious capital, Jerusalem, for the occasion, and that’s what we see in Acts 2—a multiregional, multilinguistic gathering. Continue reading ““Not as a dove…”: Two Pentecost poems by Mark DeBolt”
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