One evening last November, one of the twelve evenings my father spent in the ICU at Fairview Southdale Hospital, in Minneapolis, I enjoyed a short conversation with the nurse who was coming on shift, and preparing my dad for a quiet night. The nurse was up and down, typing on the computer keyboard, tapping the beeping IV keypads, checking hoses, repositioning my father on the pillows, dashing in and out to get supplies and run other errands.
As he worked I asked him questions about the monitor tracking my dad’s breathing pattern. I apologized for bothering this medical professional in his duties. “Oh, I’m happy to answer your questions,” he said, with a genuine smile. “It’s part of why I’m here.” He pointed to the jagged line tracking my father breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out, above the ventilator’s constant, underlying rhythm. The line changed color when it crossed different thresholds.
“You see here?” the nurse said, pointing to the line where it stayed down in the color green. “This is a breath that the machine did all by itself, and Gary rode the vent.” “He ‘rode the vent’?” I asked. “Yes,” he answered. “It means he let the machine breathe for him. I’d actually like him to ride the vent a little, tonight,” the nurse continued. “Riding the vent lets him rest, and when he rests, his lungs can heal.” The nurse paused. Then he said, “Of course we don’t want him to ride the vent all night. It’s also good when he tries to breathe on his own. That’s part of healing, too.”
I looked at the monitor with new understanding. “Don’t ride the vent,” I found myself praying to my father. (He was one of two key people who taught me the value of working hard.) “Get it, Daddy,” I almost whispered. I felt heartened by the thin red line that told us he was working at breathing. Then I quietly chastised myself: he should rest, I remembered.
Again, it’s a both/and situation: You’re encouraged to ride the vent, but you are also encouraged to not ride the vent. Ride the vent, don’t ride the vent. Both are important.
Now, as most of you know, my father did not regain the ability to breathe on his own. He spent the last twelve nights of his earthly life in that ICU room, sedated and intubated, in the company of good, skilled nurses and doctors. In the end, he ‘rode the vent’ all the way to that other shore. And so, as an illustration of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, maybe you might wonder if my father’s time on a ventilator is all that cheerful or hopeful.
But it truly is a good and useful story. It truly is a Pentecost story, a Holy Spirit story. After all, God is with us in both life and death. The Spirit broods over the primordial waters of chaos, and therefore we can trust that she also broods over us in our chaotic return from this earthly life back into God’s immediate embrace. My father did not recover to enjoy a few more years of unassisted breathing in this realm of human life. But he was borne by God’s Breath into the Communion of Saints. My father has found healing and health. He goes forth rejoicing in the power of the Spirit, alleluia, alleluia.
And so it is with hope and even a bit of cheer that I borrow this image of a hospital ventilator from my father’s last days, and use it to guide our reflections on the Holy Spirit of God, the Breath of the Holy Three, the soaring and warming fire of Pentecost, the movement and power that flows beneath us, rhythmically supporting us, empowering our every breath. The Holy Spirit: she is, well, she is our ventilator. And in our lives together in the Spirit, we are invited to ‘ride the vent’ — to let the Spirit teach, correct, and hold us. And we are challenged to not ‘ride the vent’ — to teach, correct, and hold ourselves, and one another, in this phenomenal and serendipitous world.
First, let’s consider the various ways we ‘ride the vent’ in our life of faith. In our Pentecost meditations on the image of the ventilator, ‘riding the vent’ doesn’t just mean resting, though it’s important that all of us rest regularly, let’s say, oh, about one day in every seven. But ‘riding the vent’ also means more than passive rest. It also means listening.
When we ‘ride the vent’ of the Holy Spirit, we listen to the wisdom of the younger generations. We ‘ride the vent’ while they tell us things we should know. In his Day of Pentecost sermon, Peter quotes the prophet Joel, who sings about the younger members of the community: the young ones among us, says Joel — they “will see visions.” That tracks. I am a member of Generation X, and I’m a little startled, in these years of my mid-fifties, to see that I am now older than three living generations: Millennials, Gen Z, and Alpha. And I am reminded almost daily that the younger generations surely do see splendid visions!
Our youngest companions envision a world liberated from homophobia and transphobia. (They even help bring that world into being.) They envision a world liberated from warfare and oppression. (They help bring that world into being, too.) Often enough, in their youthful visions, they are more idealistic than me, and that is good: I need that. So when I ‘ride the vent’ of the Spirit, I stop and pay attention so that I can see, understand, and be inspired by — be ventilated by — the younger generations. I let them teach me. I let them correct me. I even let their visions hold me — hold me in hope.
But ‘riding the vent’ doesn’t just mean listening to the young visionaries among us. It also means listening to the dreams of the elders. Joel sings about them, too. “Your elders will dream dreams,” sings the prophet. One great gift of Christian community is the abundant wisdom of elders, who dream of so many things. They dream of times gone by, times of challenge and hardship, but triumph and progress, too. They dream of reconciliation, at long last: some elders dream of the literal reconciliation of long-estranged friends, and help bring that about. Other elders dream of the reconciliation of their own dashed hopes — reconciling the disappointments of life with how things actually turned out.
A little while ago, I spent time with one of our elders here at St. Paul’s, and I listened with great interest to their effort, after all these long years, to make sense of the problem of human suffering. It’s one of the ancient human questions: why do innocent people suffer? Why do some of us die before our time? Why do bad things happen to faithful and conscientious people? Why? This elder wants to know. Their contemplative dreams are disturbed by this hard question, but I sense the power of the Spirit in this later-life discernment. I am honored to see this faithful soul dreaming up an answer or two. I can hardly wait to hear more from this person — more dreams, more ideas, more questions.
But then I get back to work. Remember: Ride the vent, but also don’t ride the vent. The Holy Spirit opens us up, pushes us, drives us forward. She calls us to understand and articulate our own visions, to share the wisdom of our own dreams. You and I, all of us, we have a job to do, as we rejoice in the power of the Spirit. We are on the hook to teach this community, to lead this assembly of the faithful, to correct and challenge each other when we get off track, to hold each other when we fall, to embrace and comfort each other when we’re sick or lonely, when we’re anxious or depressed.
“Don’t ride the vent,” I breathed in an anxious moment by my father’s side. I was wishing that for him, but I see now that I was also talking to myself. And now I call out this exhortation to you: Don’t ride the vent. Rise and lead, get up and teach us, work alongside us, correct and challenge us, hold us. The Holy Spirit will give you all you need to do this hard and good work.
And if you need someone to inspire you, someone to reveal what it might look like to rejoice in the power of the Spirit, consider again the strong nurse who gently spoke to me at Fairview Southdale Hospital. He patiently answered my questions; he translated complicated concepts into an ordinary language I could understand. He was friendly, steady, and serene. He did not ‘ride the vent’ as he worked, watched, and responded to the world around him.
And he reassured me that he would be there all night long.
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Preached on the Day of Pentecost (Year B) , May 19, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:25-35, 37
Romans 8:22-27
John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15