I love standing on mountain peaks, looking at the horizon, and feeling the wind in my face, or usually, buffeting my body quite strongly. Sometimes it comes from behind, so I ensure I don’t stand too close to the edge. Sometimes the wind advances from different angles. Like an geadh-glas.

 ‘The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with…. the Spirit.’ John 3.8, The Book (part).

I once heard a sermon from a Pastor who talked about the Holy Spirit descending as a dove, and that ancient Celts calling the Spirit ‘the wild goose’ had got it wrong! I was ever so slightly upset.

You see, the ancient Celts took to heart that the Spirit moves like the wind, in ‘unpredicatable’ and unknown ways. For them the better metaphor was ‘the wild goose’ or an geadh-glas in Scottish Gaelic, the ‘grey goose’.

As I stood on the summit of Yr Wddfa, that ancient place of the Celts, I wished that that Pastor was there to witness the wind pummelling  my body like a wild (or grey) goose continually colliding with me. No gentle doves; but the Spirit, an geadh-glas, Awen, the Presence, here…and wherever you are!