holy spirit, liberate us all
“just let the Holy Spirit fall on you,”
She meant well, imploring me to loosen my grip on my faculties for just a moment. Later in the day, as the chapel session turned into a lengthy worship-and-feel-the-holy-spirit moment, I sat in the back of the room as my peers expressed their emotions freely, bethel music pouring from the speaker at the front of the room.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t be moved to tears; I often cried during worship or teachings, especially when reading the Bible and realizing things about myself or my world or God. I have loved the Bible my entire life.
My friends were overtaken by the Holy Spirit; laughing, crying, shaking and calling out for a some kind of revival. I pressed further into the wall, propped up like an unbeliever in the corner of the room, no tears or laughter or lack of control bubbling up within me- only the distinct feeling that I was a fraud, and they were accessing a part of the Holy Spirit that I would never be able to.
I’ve often felt, and heard, God throughout my life. He has been my best friend since I was young. Who needs imaginary friends when you have youthful salvation?
They called it “trust issues”, offering the problem and the solution; I didn’t trust God, so I needed to put aside everything except for what He had called me to in that season (serving, of course) and trusting that He would care for me. Pure, unadulterated time cocooned in their mission, with my hours unblemished by “the world”.
I’ve had Pentecostal experiences, both in terms of denomination and Acts-like events, but I have always been far more drawn to the God of the Bible— the God who spoke to man and woman and told a grand and complex story of His Son and His love for the misunderstood.
They were transplants, trying to find the rhythm of a culture whose undercurrents they didn’t seek to understand. The border crisis spoke to me in a way the Spirit-filled sessions didn’t; many of my friends growing up had been Mexican immigrants, both documented and undocumented. I knew that the oranges in the Food-For-Less were harvested by migrant workers, and I knew the migrant workers.
Was I a fraud for not breaking into tears and asking for revival, and a lost lamb for calling the treatment of children at the border evil? “Deceived”, for having transgender friends over to our house?
Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz writes, “The very poor and oppressed of Perú, among whom I worked for three years, taught me too much, and I could not maintain a lifestyle in which people talked about poverty while living a privileged life.” - Mujerista Theology
With my journal in my lap and the expressiveness of my friends in my purview, I started to realize the truth: I didn’t want the revival we were supposed to be praying for anymore.
Maybe that’s why I couldn’t loosen my grip on my emotions: my belief in revival was waning, my appetite for justice was growing, and the revival that we were praying for was one of mass conformation rather than one of total liberation.
Flashing lights and worship nights have their place in the revival, but the work for liberation is much heavier and it requires from me personally a certain level of constant reflection.
Sometimes, I feel and I hear God speak to me still. Sometimes, I cry in worship. But most often, I find Him in the grand and complex stories of those around me.
