The Spirit Of God Like A Fire Is Burning: Mystical Christianity
own wish list of hopes and fears for my child's future, trying somehow with God's power to hex my child against adversity, illness, disappointment and failure. Rather, as the verse above teaches, I was taught to wait on the spirit and bless the child with the words that came into my heart as I waited on the spirit. Sometimes strange or unexpected phrases escaped my lips, but at no point did I have any apprehension about the things I was saying.
From time to time I was asked to give my wife a Husband's Blessing in a formal ritual of placing my hands on her head and proceeding again as described in the scripture above. And at the beginning of each school year I would do the same with each of our five children, giving a Father's Blessing, waiting for spiritual promptings before I could speak.
My only regret was that as I belonged to a church with an extremely strong patriarchal tradition, I had no opportunity to receive a formal blessing from under the hands of my wife and children. Patriarchy had part to do with my leaving that church years ago and it remains in my mind that spiritual promptings in families truly move in all directions - between fathers and mothers as well as from parents to children and from children to their parents. What might I have missed by not empowering my wife and my children (when they were old enough to understand) to speak to me their own words as prompted by the spirit in a formal setting.
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord." -Gospel of Luke-
The first time I accepted a call from the church to labor in ministry, I did so only after waiting for a spiritual prompting that God also was calling me and acceptance would be a wise action on my own path.
"And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness." -Gospel of Mark-
Subsequent promptings were not limited to a venue of calls to religious activity but became a desired outcome around which most of my life's decisions were reached.
"And finding disciples, we
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