Writer Nancy Shulins writes about her most precious possessions-in her book Every Day I Love You More:

“If my house were on fire, here’s what I’d save: our wedding album (actual proof I was once a size four), my grandmother’s handwritten recipes, and a half-dozen sheets of lined paper ripped out of a notebook, covered in red ink that’s starting to fade -my husband’s love letters, circa 1985.

‘There are three letters in all, enough to last a lifetime – a good thing, considering he hasn’t written one since. In all fairness, though, that’s not entirely true. It’s not that husbands stop writing love letters; it’s that [their letters] tend to look somewhat different from the kind that boy- friends write.

“Take one I found on the table last week: Hon: Please be very careful driving to the barn. The roads could be slippery.

Or how about this one, penned in green on the back of a Chinese menu left by the phone: Started the laundry and took videos back. Don’t worry about dinner. I’ll pick something up.

“They don’t have the same ring as ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. ..’ On the other hand, when you come right down to it, aren’t they saying basically the same thing?”

It is the Spirit of God that transforms such simple scribbling into beautiful and meaningful expressions of love, the Spirit of selfless compassion and reconciling forgiveness that makes a household a family and a group of different souls a church.

Today we celebrate God’s gift to us of that Spirit -the love that binds the Father to the Son and now binds us to God and to one another. It is the love that transcends words to embrace the heart and soul of each one of us; it is the love that gives voice to the things we believe but find difficult to say; it is the love that gives us the courage and grace to work for the dreams that seem beyond our reach.

As we celebrate the feast of Pentecost we celebrate a triumph of the Spirit of God -the life and love of God that transcends nationalities, boundaries, politics and legalisms that transforms and renews the earth in compassion, justice and peace. The Spirit of God calls us to recognize and celebrate our connectedness to God and to one another; it gives us the courage and grace to work for the dreams we are sometimes too cynical or fearful to hope for. May the Spirit of God, the creative “breath” of the Holy One, always blow within our hearts to enliven us with God’s love, transforming us in eternal hope and illuminating for us the possibilities of bringing the promise of the resurrection into our homes and hearts.