MEDITATION ON THE PRELUDE
Pentecost 2021
Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) Prélude Opus 11, no 21
The wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. John 3:8
At this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in their own language. Acts 2: 6
The profound celebration of Pentecost brings forth dramatic images and calls up powerful sounds: tongues of fire descending, a violent wind filling the house where the disciples are staying, crowds of people gathering. With the prelude I have chosen for our service today, I hope to focus slightly differently on these manifestations of the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit as breath, wind, air, can be named as inspiration, a term that doubles as a way of describing an inhalation of air into our lungs. When we are amazed, often we take a quick, deep breath, and hold it for a second. I imagine the devout pilgrims gathered outside the house where the disciples were, in the moment of their astonishment, taking just such a breath.
If you have ever traveled to a land far from home, you know how comforting it is when you hear someone speak a word or a phrase of your native language. It is as though someone familiar has called you by name. How remarkable and beautiful it must have been for these travelers to hear and recognize those words of the disciples “speaking about God’s deeds.”
Another aspect of the Holy Spirit understood by all nature lovers is that of a breeze or wind flowing through trees, cooling the atmosphere, coming from nowhere and disappearing, utterly free and mysterious. It is invisible apart from its effects; we hear it, feel it, and love it. John says, “So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
In the Prélude Opus 11, no 21 of Scriabin, the tenderness of the delicate melody, the unaccountable movement of the line through tonalities and across the range of the piano, the sweetness of the resolution of each phrase, all suggest to me the kind of inspiration that the pilgrims might have experienced on Pentecost. The workings of the Spirit was, for them, a gift like no other, arriving on the wind as the sound of home.
Faithfully yours, Mary Therese
