Sometimes you get more than you thought you were asking for from God. God could just be waiting for you to ask; and note that once you do, you also grant God permission to give you what God had planned all along. That is apparently what happened to me during a lengthy prayer back on December 27, 1967. And the memory remains as fresh as honey.
First, a little background information. On the previous November 17th, during a prayer meeting in the basement of a Catholic church in Des Moines, Iowa, I encountered the Holy Spirit with a life-changing directness. A former agnostic, I found myself seeking God for grounding, meaning, and purpose. I was working on an M.A. in psychology at Drake University. Yet even after that initial infilling, and possibly because of it, I wanted more of God. Though I was not sure what exactly I was seeking, I believed I would recognize it should it come my way. I was acutely aware of a continuing emptiness in my being which I sensed only God could fill.
Back to that cold December night. Fully awake and intensely in prayer, I kept asking for but not sensing God. Then I remembered that when the initial infilling of the Holy Spirit took place, I was praying for another person, a gentle, possible saint-in-the-making undergraduate. I asked God – if there was a God, which I was not yet sure of – to bless this young woman with what was being called the “baptism of the Holy Spirit,’ whatever that meant. While focused on her, the Spirit baptized me. Go figure God.
I was staying with my sister at her Chicago apartment over Christmas break, as I silently prayed for “Something More,” Hoping for a return of the Spirit, I began to pray that my sister, Francine, receive the fullness of the Spirit which I was seeking. Focusing on her, I opened my heart to let my love for her fill me like water a basin. Once again, while attending to my sister, the Holy Spirit reappeared, and generated what remains the holiness moment of my life. Words cannot do justice to what transpired. But I offer a depiction nonetheless:
The atmosphere in the room began to change. It seemed as if the air started to slowly oscillate in a rhythmic manner, suggesting the coordinated beating of wings. The intensity and rapidity of the beating of these invisible wings increased as an angelic host drew ever nearer to me, lying on my back in the bed. Then I felt as if I were being lifted up off the bed ever so slightly. Next it was as if the Queen Mother Herself arrived, took my heart out of my chest, cleansed, hallowed and healed it, and then put it back into its rightful place. The Spirit accomplished this with infinite power and tenderness, both at once. The Holy Spirit, who could manifestly create or destroy universes, stooped down to a finite living being replete with dusty dreams and diverse desires, not only with love, but as Love Itself. The Holy Spirit of my experience is the Love of God. That “God is love” is to be taken most seriously and literally.
After the Spirit placed my renewed heart back into my body, I was softly lowered back to my prior position. At the same time, the beating of this myriad of wings slowly diminished, until the atmosphere in the room was quite itself again. But I wasn’t. Finally, I opened my eyes, which I had kept closed during the entire encounter. And I saw sparks of light emanating in all directions from my renewed and regenerated heart. I had received the Love of God directly, without a word being spoken.
Fast forward to the summer of 1983. My wife and I and our three children are camping at the Saylorville Reservoir, north of Des Moines. It is a beautiful, sunny and hot July day and I am traversing along a well-traveled path across a large, gradually sloping hill, with gleaming white blankets of clover on both sides of the trail. About halfway across this hill, I hear the rhythmic drone of wings, clearly of the same tone and timbre as the invisible angelic host from the previous Spirit heart-cleansing. Thinking that the Holy Spirit was about to come upon me yet again, I fall to my knees, close my eyes, and open my arms in anticipation of yet another unexpected blessing. But the beating does not increase in intensity. It remains the same. After a time, I open my eyes and I see bees, honeybees by the thousands, gathering nectar for honey production from the clover in full bloom. Sheepishly, I look around to see if anybody took note of my sudden dropping to my knees. Mercifully, nobody was around.
I sensed immediately that this commonality had real significance. The connection between angels and bees was unmistakable. Yet how is it that winged workers of earth and heaven share the same tone and timbre? Perhaps bees are to nature what angels are to heaven, winged workers who share in the joyful celebration of honey and of love.
It took decades before I realized the likely connection, simple yet profound. Honey is the one food-stuff which does not decay. It has no expiration date. And neither does love, be it divine or human. For love’s vastness cannot be measured, nor can it be irreversibly destroyed. Being of God, love can always be rekindled, somehow, somewhere, sometime, across the imperishable bridge of forgiveness.
If the primary purpose of bees is to generate honey, what might be the primary purpose of humanity? Why do we exist? What is it that we are meant to do for God, which parallels what bees do for nature? What if our primary purpose is to generate love, like bees generate honey? The truth is, love has even greater staying power than honey, and will not decay either in this world or in whatever is to come. Love just may be the sacred substance of God, as honey the enduring substance of bees.
If I am right, we need to ask ourselves whether we are generating love in the world. And so I ask you: have you generated more love in the world? Have others tasted of your honey? The truth is, when you bring love into the world, you are also bringing God to others. There is no more important or needed work, wherever you are and whoever you are, than to love greatly. Just look at how much honey those little bees produce.
Imagine a world without honey. Imagine a world without love.
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