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Monday, September 01, 2003
Empowerment by The Holy Spirit?
(See also the first letter to Kathy Galloway dated 2/08/02 in Current Issue No1 on this site)
Kathy Galloway, leader of The Iona Community affirms the Community’s empowerment by Spirit in the first sentence of her article in Coracle on the Community’s strategic objectives dated August 2003. This empowerment is referred to again in the last sentence of Kathy’s three page article “---- confident that the Spirit still has work for us to do on Iona.”
Initially to be empowered by The Holy Spirit is to place one’s soul and Spirit before The Christ without any reservations or conditions. It is therefore to lay down our life and start again in the Gift of Grace alone. This includes any “hopes or ultimate concerns” as Kathy put it in her leader to leader interview in Coracle shortly after her appointment. Kathy stated her opinion that Spirit would “orient in the direction of these hopes and ultimate concerns”. The assumed orientation BY Spirit as Kathy maintains is but an attempt by the human will consciously or otherwise to empower The Holy Spirit! This is not possible. Indeed Kathy has it that The Holy Spirit orientates to us as human beings. Spirit does not orient to anything or anybody – Holy Spirit IS. Amen.
Therefore Kathy’s two statements described above reveal a mixed message. It is essential for us all to search our hearts – only thus in the Gift of Grace alone are we enabled to feel (non sensory) Who is empowering who! Amen.
Kathy’s personal statement of HER orientation to The Holy Spirit implies that Paul, or Saul as he was at the time walked along the road to Damascus with the Holy Spirit in his wake. The Iona Community therefore requires to consider the Spiritual implications of such an orientation to God for us all as individuals, and for the Iona Community as a whole by virtue of Kathy’s position as leader.
In her article on strategic priorities Kathy does not confirm whether the affirmed empowerment of The Community by The Holy Spirit arises from The Community being led by The Holy Spirit, or the Holy Spirit being led by the “hopes and ultimate concerns” of The Community. This either as a body or on the part of any one individual member thereof, leader or otherwise.
Deuteronomy 30. 11-20 inclusive.
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