So what is troubling me about the Pentecost is the way it seemed to birth hierarchy, right out of thin air (pun intended).

To do this of course, requires that you believe that Spirit is also authority and that Spirit comes from above. Both of those assumptions, it seems to me were to have devastating consequences over the next 2000 years.

First of all, if Spirit is also authority, then the apostles became the first anointed Christian priests, ordained by Spirit itself to spread the message that Jesus Christ had been teaching before he was executed. The Church began, and very soon afterwards, the apostles started ordaining priests and so it goes until the present day presumably, when every ordained priest or minister should be able to trace his lineage to one of the twelve, at least in theory. The authority that flowed from those assumptions was doled out from one to another in perhaps the first pyramid scheme since the Egyptians. Eventually, the experience had to have become a little diluted. Certainly most ordinations today are not generally accompanied by the wind and fire of the Pentecost. It’s more of a graduation ceremony in most churches, where you receive the blessing of the hierarchy to transmit the message officially. Gone is the mystical experience, the direct connection with Spirit that gave the first apostles and the hundreds of people standing among them, the legs to preach the Gospel. So ordination, tracing its lineage back to the Pentecost, but avoiding the messiness of mystical enlightenment, becomes a process for inviting priests into the hierarchy of power that is the Church.

Simplified for sure, but perplexing to me nonetheless.

The second point though is really devastating. Along with the creation of this vast hierarchy came the notion that only those near the top had direct access to Spirit. That in fact access to Spirit was a privilege you might have the higher up you were. The implication of this was of course that people in high office were most holy, while those closest to the land were most heathen. For Indigenous folks, this was a definite disadvantage when they were confronted with European society. A hierarchical structure whose power was maintained through the notion that Sprit is a top down matter descended upon a people for whom the exact opposite was true. Spirit is in the earth and is accessible to all who practice the indigenous methods of connecting with the land. Methods, incidentally, given to humans by the Creator to allow people to be more fully in “place:” on the land and in touch with Spirit.

In all seriousness, I am beginning to see the power in the Pentecost like I have never seen it before.

As an interesting aside, I have a friend who studies in New Mexico with Rabbi Gershon Winkler, a teacher who practices what he calls Jewish flexidoxy. As I understand it Flexidoxy is a religious practice that begins with the assumption that Judaism is actually an indigenous religion and therefore needs strong connections to the land to be fully in tune with it’s entire spiritual experience. And if you can’t live in Israel where the religion has it’s home, then you need to understand the indigenous practices of the places where you do live and draw on them to express yourself as an Orthodox flexidox Jew. Rabbi Winkler writes:

Winkler’s practice involves become a rabbinical shaman:

The idea that mystical experience and knowledge of Spirit comes from being “people of the land” is deeply compelling. For me, it completely turns the result of the Pentecost experience on its head.

Synergy reminds me that yesterday was Pentecost in the Christian calender. This day commerates the day the Apostles were visited by a “Comforter,” Spirit itself.

This must have been a transcendant mystical experience. Gnostics for example look to the Pentecost as the pinnacle of the Gnostic mystical journey, looking to me a lot like a collective Buddhist awakening experience:

Of course others talk about the Pentecost as the intial ordination of the first preists of Christiantiy, ordained by Spirit and setting in motion the design of the hierarchy of the Church:

I am struck by this institutionalization of what is probably the most mystical experience a Christian might have. In the book of Acts, the experience is described in the second chapter as the onset of a rushing wind accompanied by tongues of fire which sat on the Apostles. Being filled with Spirit, they began speaking in dozens of different languages. The whole scene was so weird that Peter had to stand in front of horrified bystanders and tell them that, no in fact, all of these people are not drunk at ten o’ clock in the morning, but filled with Spirit of a different kind. What an experience.

And yet, what happened with that experience is that it became the basis for which spiritual authority was to be passed down the hierarchy of what then became called “the Church.” A spiritual lineage that became an entrenched organization.

Lynn posts a very nice and comprehensive resource for anyone starting out on an auto-didactical exploration of classical music. She includes a list of good resources and some advice for dealing with fervent advice from others:

We serious classical music lovers are a bunch of fanatics; we’re lunatics; we’re scary. We can’t help it; the music we love is like a religion with us and we defend it and argue about it amoung ourselves with all the fervor of religious fundamentalists. When we discover a potential convert our worst fear is that he will get away – that, like most people, he will hear only a dozen or so pieces and decide that classical music is just not his thing, without ever hearing the dozens more that he might have liked…

However, a new listener has to start somewhere. Anyone who thinks he might be interested in classical music has already heard at least parts of some of the most well-known pieces, therefore it stands to reason that his interest is based on these and he will not be immediately turned off by hearing similar music. On the other hand, if you are trying to convert someone who thinks that all classical music is nothing but prissy-sounding 18th century muzak, then more Mozart, or even more Rossini, is probably not going to do the trick. I’ll get back to that kind of listener at a later date. Right now, I want to talk to that first group – those who want to explore classical music.