June 2025

VIEW FROM THE HEIGHTS               

June 2026

Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear.

Let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.

James 1: 19, 21 The Message

Greetings!

Yesterday, we celebrated Pentecost. The high point of our service was Thomas, Grace, and Mrs Momah singing “Washed in the Blood” – in English and Igbo. It was brilliant!

The blending of languages and the bonding of cultures is at the heart of Pentecost.

And the message of Pentecost is at the heart of Christian teachings:

The Good News of God’s love is for all people from all ethnos.

When Spirit came in power to Jesus’ disciples, it was to bring the gift of multilingual communication. Speaking and listening in the languages, accents, and cultural idioms of others: to share God’s love and heal fractured humankind.

In his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV emphasized how important this is. He writes:

"War is not only fought, but also culturally conditioned through simplistic narratives, a friend-or-foe mentality, disinformation and fear."

Simplistic narratives cause division and conflict.

Spirit-inspired narratives connect people and communities.

Spirit-inspired speech gives voice to God’s love.

It is authentic and affirmational.

When I grew up, accents were everything. The crispness of the consonants, the shape of the vowels, determined a person’s whole life. My headmistress sent to me to elocution classes to lose my South-East London ones. She said that I would never get into a London teaching hospital speaking as I did.

I followed her advice and learnt to say garage vs. “garrige”, cold with an “l”, and “Rome” with only 2 syllables. (Versus 3: Row-ah-um)

Speech classes worked! I trained as a nurse at one of London’s best hospitals.

And eventually studied preaching with Peter Gomes, one of American Baptist’s greatest preachers. Recently, however, I’ve found myself going back to South-East London speak. I never quite mastered “Rome” – now, I don’t try!

In grammar school, I learned to “code switch” to the middle class via my diphthongs and triphthongs. Now, I’ve switched back!

It’s partly nostalgia for my childhood community. But it is also a rebellion against the current obsession with poshness & wealth.

Well, we have to do something…

Blessedly, Spirit does not demand posh accents or the “right” language.

But she does try to improve our speaking styles: emphasizing our love words, eliminating syllables of scorn, retraining tetchy tongues.

Spirit does silences too…

All at once, a strong wind shook the mountain and shattered the rocks.

But the Lord was not in the wind.

Next, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.

Then there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.

Finally, there was a gentle breeze.  

(Or “a soft whisper” or “hardly a sound.”)

1 Kings 19: 11-12 C.E.V.

Sending you gentle blessings and soft whispers of God’s love,

Brenda