Common Ground Song 32 ‘Enemy of Apathy’
Words / Music: John Bell © WGRG / Iona Community
YouTube recording:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwsiXzcYFis
Featured image: from publicdomainpictures.net

In looking for a recording of this song to link to, I found a blog post on a parish website. The author there makes a very good point: that the title given to this hymn is not merely taken from the last line (rather than the first line as is usually taken for a title), but reflects the composer’s understanding of the Holy Spirit. She represents the activity of God in the world. Unlike the popular image of God sitting on a throne in heaven, observing the world from a distance, the workings of the Holy Spirit prove that God is so intimately bound up in the creation, and so passionate about sustaining it, that God’s activity is ceaseless and intimate.

The first verse takes us back to the creation myth, when the Spirit, as part of the uncreated Trinity, lovingly carries out the creator’s orders to turn chaos into order. If the creator God is referenced as father of creation, then the Spirit is referenced here for balance as its mother. She not only ‘hovers’ but ‘broods on the waters’ and ‘mothers creation’, restlessly ‘sighing and singing’.  What was brought forth is loved from the beginning with the intensity of a mother’s love for her child.

In the second verse, the restlessness of the Spirit is pictured going to and from over the earth, like the dove in the Noah story, ‘resting where she wishes, lighting close at hand or soaring through the skies’. The Spirit is not just a comforting stillness and peace in our hearts, though she can be that, but also what stirs us into action. And ‘she nests in the womb … nourishing potential hidden to our eyes’, a reminder that each newborn child has the potential to do something great for God, with the Spirit’s help. This mothering God encourages us to do our best, just as our earthly mothers encourage us to be good children, do well at school and strive to be the best we can at whatever we turn our hands to.

Verse three takes us to the day of Pentecost with its references to fire, tongues and ecstasy. She ‘weans and inspires’, again using mothering imagery. Not everyone will receive an ecstatic experience of the Spirit like that, but it is something we should be open to and even seek. See my previous post here for more on that.

Finally, we are reminded that the Spirit is part of the Trinity: ‘one with God in essence, gifted by the Saviour’. St Augustine wrote, ‘The Holy Spirit, according to the Holy Scriptures, is neither the Spirit of the Father, nor only the Spirit of the Son, but the two. In the same way, he teaches us the common charity [love] of the Father and Son, through which they love each other mutually’ (De Trinitas 15:17,27, quoted by Jaime Garcia in his book ’15 days of prayer with Saint Augustine’).

None of what we write, of course, can ever be the full truth. Everyone has their own experience of God, and the mystery of the three persons of the Trinity is too deep to explore in these brief blog posts. To quote Augustine again, ‘All that you imagine is not God. All that you understand by reflection is not him. If it was him, he could not be understood by reflection’ (Sermons 21:2). So let us just accept the love of God, Father, Son and mothering Spirit, who wants us to achieve great things for him/her. To return to the last and title line of the hymn, ‘Enemy of apathy and heavenly dove’.