Poetry, post-truth and Pentecost

I’m going to start by reading a poem by the Caribbean poet Kei Miller. If you wish, you can hear it again later, in his actual voice, by looking him up online in the Poetry Archive http://www.poetryarchive.org/ Search: Speaking in tongues

The Day of Pentecost. The descent of the Holy Spirit. The official birthday of the church – disciples suddenly freed from fear and sent out with power to speak a language previously unknown to them – perhaps many languages. A dramatic event, witnessed by many in Jerusalem, the holy city: then as now, a potent religious symbol; then as now, one of the most violently contested cities on earth. On that day, some were scornful, but many were ‘cut to the heart’ and persuaded to convert to this new, dynamic faith in Jesus of Nazareth. As an image, the Day of Pentecost still has an electric charge, as this contemporary poem reveals. The poet recalls being both awe-struck and rather embarrassed by his grandmother’s ecstatic Pentecostal prayer group, as he stands ‘on the outskirts’, watching. Later, as adult, he finds himself defending the gift of speaking in tongues, not because he identifies as such a worshipper himself, but because he realises that his own work as a poet requires a similar act of faith, a similar effort to speak an entirely new language, and a similar willingness to serve the truth, whatever people’s reactions.

What do we think actually happened on the first Day of Pentecost? Listening closely to Luke’s account at the beginning of Acts, I think it’s not entirely clear. First of all, I am not sure exactly how many of the disciples this happened to. ‘They were all together ’ – most traditional paintings only depict the apostles and maybe Mary – or could it mean all the 120 people, including the various women disciples, specifically mentioned in chapter 1? Given that Peter’s sermon quotes Joel’s prophecy about the spirit being poured out on all flesh, ‘and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy’, I suspect the latter. Then, Luke writes in a way that shows he is consciously using metaphor. When he speaks of the sound from heaven as ‘like the rush of a mighty wind’ or of the tongues ‘as of fire’, there are definite implications of ‘as it were’ in the Greek text. This is a mysterious event, not quite possible to describe or articulate in straightforward terms, though there are certainly echoes of that mighty wind at the beginning of Genesis, which was sweeping over the abyss. This is a new act of creation. And what tongues did the disciples speak in, inspired by the Spirit? Were they indeed speaking ecstatically but incomprehensibly like the women in that Pentecostal prayer group? The fact that some witnesses jeered about people who were ‘filled with new wine’ at 9 in the morning would suggest this. Or were the disciples given the capacity to proclaim the mighty works of God in perfectly expressed foreign languages, so that all the diverse listeners present could understand? Luke lets both possibilities stand, but noticeably then includes the whole text of quite a long, articulate sermon by Peter – we didn’t hear all of it – which speaks of this day as the fulfilling of God’s promise that in the end times, all flesh shall receive the Spirit and prophesy.

Prophecy in the Old Testament came in different forms. On the one hand, there were prophets who lived in somewhat disreputable groups and seem to have been caught up in ecstatic utterance, sometimes casting themselves to the ground when under the influence of God’s spirit. On the other there were figures whose names we know, who spoke out, often using powerful imagery but normally speaking plainly and controversially about the political realities of their day. I think Luke is consciously seeking to invoke all the echoes he can about the power of the Spirit, and it’s fascinating to think about how different wings of the Christian church ever since have emphasized different manifestations of the Holy Spirit – to inspire people to ecstatic prayer or to inspire them to speak political truth to power.

But we are certainly intended to hear a story about dramatic and powerful communication, speech which utterly transformed lives, for those who spoke and those who heard it. Many have suggested that the Day of Pentecost is like a complete reversal of the Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel, where human beings are left speaking a plethora of languages and dialects, different and conflicting tribes who are incomprehensible to one another. This is apparently what the Spirit is able to overcome: through dramatic signs, through passionate or ecstatic behaviour, or through carefully argued, articulate speech. In the context of diverse languages and perspectives, truth breaks out of hiding and commends itself in whatever way we find most persuasive. It speaks to our hearts, persuades our minds, and changes the direction or our lives. We wish.

For my problem in reflecting on this story in our own age is that our contemporary world feels a lot more like Babel than Pentecost, and it’s getting worse. As more and more of the world becomes connected to the internet and engaged in social media, technology that once looked simply like a wonderful gift enabling all humanity to communicate with one another and allow all voices to be heard, has proved to have a very dark side.

For, as well as its massice convenience and connectivity, parts of the internet have become places of bullying and threat, aimed at silencing others rather than encouraging all to speak. We have become accustomed to a tone of scorn or outrage in debate that reacts with tribal fury rather than respectful argument to opinions not their own. We have seen the deliberate promulgation of false narratives for political ends (and we know that fake news goes viral much more quickly than facts). Populist politicians have muddied the waters of any effort to get at the truth, by decrying experts as elite rather than knowledgeable. And many people have fallen back on just believing only their own hero even when he’s talking nonsense; or smearing their opponent on the grounds that she’s female, or Jewish, or Muslim, or black, or gay. Certainty is everywhere announced; truth is very difficult to discern. Indeed, it seems that we are in a Humpty Dumpty world where truth no longer appears even to matter. It is whatever the last tweet by a powerful man said it is, even when he speaks of peace deals while actively provoking conflict.

Even in their more harmless or entertaining aspects, there is something worrying about the addictiveness of our smartphone apps, an addictiveness that we now know has been introduced by design. We spend a lot of time in a virtual world that is fascinating but full of distraction. We dwell within echo chambers, just reading, hearing and viewing only what accords with our own perspective on things and which already persuades us – while being under the impression that we are hearing it all. Our own personal data freely given will be secretly used by others to persuade us to buy products and buy political views that will affect how we vote. Unless we’re careful, what we consume or promote online stretches neither our heart’s compassion nor our mind’s ability to consider complex argument. Yet it fills so much of our time.

Going back to the Pentecost story, it’s worth looking at this issue of what our time and our hearts are being filled with. The metaphor of filling or being filled permeates Luke’s narrative. First of all, the exact date of the event is expressed in a curious way – ‘the days of Pentecost (there were 50 of them, following the Passover) were all filled up.’ Then the house where the disciples were gathered was completely filled with the sound of the rushing mighty wind. Then the disciples themselves were filled with the Holy Spirit. Then the mockers proclaimed that these people were ‘filled with new wine’ (well known to be generally inferior, like much of the stuff you get served in a student context). So what exactly we are being filled with is crucial. How can we open ourselves to be filled with the spirit of God and not just the mildly entertaining or wholly toxic spirits of the age? Just trying to avoid being affected, and stay in control of our own thoughts or mood, is not likely to work; I think we have to consciously decide what spirits to surrender to. What’s so impressive in the poem I started with is the picture of the poet’s grandmother as she is transformed from a dignified older woman with proper table manners into someone who becomes ‘all earthquake’, who is down in the dust with her stockings torn, yielding all her control in the service of the spirit who speaks through her. How could such a woman take the risk of trusting that power; how did she know what was safe and true?

Now her habits of worship are not the same as mine, but the issues for me are the same. If we want to speak with the voice of God, if we want to discern and serve the truth, if we want to avoid being just taken over by whatever forces are studying to persuade us, there are some disciplines we need to adopt.

Chief among these is monitoring and being honest about our use of time. How much time do we actually spend on our screens, and how much of this is informative to our minds or nourishing to our souls? Do we ever apply ourselves to reading anything deep or difficult, other than what we have to do for work or study? Do we give our own minds and hearts the space to pray, or to reflect on life quietly rather than just being reactive? Do we let ourselves get enough solid sleep?

The next question is to check who we are actually talking to, whether online or in person. If it is only people who think just like we do, we need to plan how to put ourselves in places where we will genuinely meet people different from us, and listen to their perspective. And if we value truth, where exactly are we looking for it? If we’re getting our political news just from social media, or from threads that have been pre-selected to appeal to our views, what about searching out sources where the journalism is fact-checked? And indeed paying for it, if we wish to see reliable journalism survive our lifetimes. Furthermore, we should wholeheartedly value the academic education that teaches us how to assess evidence, to understand how and with what degree of certainty we know things, and which gets us to learn painstakingly how to construct coherent and valid arguments in support of our conclusions.

And you will not be surprised to hear that I think it helps to immerse ourselves from time to time in a quite different kind of discourse. Poetry. I have increasingly become convinced that poetry –all poetry, not just consciously religious stuff – can have a profound effect on our spirituality, precisely because of its relationship to truth and the way in which human being make meaning. First of all, nobody writes poetry in order to avoid telling the truth, although they may ‘tell it slant’. You know this because it deliberately draws attention to itself as an act of communication, rather than trying to slip unnoticed into your brain. Unlike slick prose, you may not immediately ‘get’ a poem on first hearing or reading; you have to slow right down, read it more than once, take time to think and feel your way through the words and the rhythms. Then you notice that it is working at several different levels at once. Sometimes, as in ‘Speaking in tongues’, it moves through different time periods – the narrator is both a boy and a man. Sometimes the poem’s tone of voice shifts, and changes the apparent meaning of words. Often a poem interrogates how we achieve to their perspective. And if we value truth, where exactly are we looking for it? If we’re getting our political news just from social media, or from threads that have been pre-selected to appeal to our views, what about searching out sources where the journalism is fact-checked? And indeed paying for it, if we wish to see reliable journalism survive our lifetimes. Furthermore, we should wholeheartedly value the academic education that teaches us how to assess evidence, to understand how and with what degree of certainty we know things, and which gets us to learn painstakingly how to construct coherent and valid arguments in support of our conclusions.

we’re getting our political news just from social media, or from threads that have been pre-selected to appeal to our views, what about searching out sources where the journalism is fact-checked? And indeed paying for it, if we wish to see reliable journalism survive our lifetimes. Furthermore, we should wholeheartedly value the academic education that teaches us how to assess evidence, to understand how and with what degree of certainty we know things, and which gets us to learn painstakingly how to construct coherent and valid arguments in support of our conclusions.

And you will not be surprised to hear that I think it helps to immerse ourselves from time to time in a quite different kind of discourse. Poetry. I have increasingly become convinced that poetry –all poetry, not just consciously religious stuff – can have a profound effect on our spirituality, precisely because of its relationship to truth and the way in which human being make meaning. First of all, nobody writes poetry in order to avoid telling the truth, although they may ‘tell it slant’. You know this because it deliberately draws attention to itself as an act of communication, rather than trying to slip unnoticed into your brain. Unlike slick prose, you may not immediately ‘get’ a poem on first hearing or reading; you have to slow right down, read it more than once, take time to think and feel your way through the words and the rhythms. Then you notice that it is working at several different levels at once. Sometimes, as in ‘Speaking in tongues’, it moves through different time periods – the narrator is both a boy and a man. Sometimes the poem’s tone of voice shifts, and changes the apparent meaning of words. Often a poem interrogates how we achieve truthfulness and express it in language, and conveys both the effort and the risk involved. Words – exact words – how they sound and how they are placed, are made to work hard. Strong imagery or story-telling, rather like Luke’s, ensures that the poem is memorable; you will be able to return to it in your mind, and reflect on how your own experience of other people’s faith has affected your life choices in subtle ways. And you will not be able to escape your own part in making meaning from what you hear and see. You will find that you are opening your heart and mind to their own experience of the day of Pentecost and the liberating, powerful, fiery language of the Holy Spirit of God.