Friend
Friend – as you stood by the door
I sensed you wanted more
Than what I could offer
Which would appease your sentiment, for
It was scant this pledge of mine –
Could I speak of God and the message divine
Wherein the Holy Ghost resided
In resonance of peaceful abiding?
Friend, as I close my hand in prayer
I think of you there,
In some unknowable place,
And have I told through partly open lips
That was the place you’d find me in –
Examine the clod
Of cloud and God.
Friend, I smooth downwards
The chiffon and lace of years
And into my hearts
Shed my love and my tears.
Turn you now towards your goal
Through that door we all exit and go –
Know you now the meaning of life
Amidst the chains and strife?
Friend, as you turn and go
I catch your shadow
Like rose through snow;
Take with you hence the sense of peace
And you will find
Complete, God-given relief.
Snow Rose -- Rein Nomm
Friend – as you stood by the door
I sensed you wanted more
Than what I could offer
Which would appease your sentiment, for
It was scant this pledge of mine –
Could I speak of God and the message divine
Wherein the Holy Ghost resided
In resonance of peaceful abiding?
Friend, as I close my hand in prayer
I think of you there,
In some unknowable place,
And have I told through partly open lips
That was the place you’d find me in –
Examine the clod
Of cloud and God.
Friend, I smooth downwards
The chiffon and lace of years
And into my hearts
Shed my love and my tears.
Turn you now towards your goal
Through that door we all exit and go –
Know you now the meaning of life
Amidst the chains and strife?
Friend, as you turn and go
I catch your shadow
Like rose through snow;
Take with you hence the sense of peace
And you will find
Complete, God-given relief.
Snow Rose -- Rein Nomm
After Jesus was resurrected from the dead he instructed his followers to "make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19). In English the term is often rendered as "Holy Ghost." Matthew also claimed that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and in the "Gospel of John" the spirit descended upon him during his baptism, like a dove. When emperor Constantinus I summoned an ecclesiastical council at Νikaia (modern Iznik, Turkey) in 325 to impose consensus on various doctrinal disputes, the attendees from throughout Christendom adopted the Nicene Creed (Symbolum Nicaenum), which defined the Holy Spirit as the Lord and Giver of Life, the Creator Spirit which was present before the creation of the universe and through which everything was made in God the Son (Jesus) by God the Father. (In Greek a creed was a "symbolon," 1/2 of a broken object which, when placed together with the other 1/2, verified the bearer's identity.) In his "Epistle to the Galatians," St. Paul listed the 9 fruits of the Holy Spirit as "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control." In addition, based on letters to the Corinthians, Romans, and Ephesians, he also postulated various "gifts of the Holy Spirit" which are specific abilities granted to individual Christians, though the various denominations list them differently. ("Charisma" is the Greek for gift. In theological terms charisma has referred to a divinely conferred talent or power, but the German sociologist Max Weber (in his posthumously published "Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft" [Economy and Society], 1922) provided a secular definition: "Charisma is a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These as such are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader."
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