My Story of Pentecost. A simple woman’s testimony

Dedicated to those who have done the greatest damage

I am a simple woman on whom the gift of language might be said to be largely wasted, really, since I cannot speak of worldly affairs, nor influence men to cease doing harm.

However, I am well able to articulate personal experience, and I have the ability to see, and make, connections between corporeal and spiritual, between mysterious and rational dimensions. This can be useful to readers.

So, I want in this story to testify, describe an event that happened in my body, for you to make of what you will.

It happened the Sunday before last, on the 8^th of June, at the Pentecost Service. I was in Hogsback and attended with a dear friend.

Boughs of pyrocanthus and red hot poker lilies leaned into the dressed stone walls on either side of the altar, and another cherished friend had created an arrangement of coaly roses which glowed over the food table in the vestibule.

Pastor Barry named all the instances of fire as they occur in the Bible, and his arms and words fanned the yellow, orange and red flames of that famous day when the Holy Spirit came to the disciples and all of us mortals on earth.

As I listened to him holding forth, both impassioned and humour-filled, I became aware of a fine, fierce, contrapuntal gust pushing itself up inside me, sitting at the end of a pew beside the scarlet carpet that runs down the middle of the little chapel’s nave. From the waters of my sacrum I could feel a slender, burning blueness ascending.

As he ended his sermon, the pastor encouraged us not immediately to chat outside with one another after the communion, but to be quiet for a bit and pay attention if God’s voice was wanting to come through to us. He emphasised that God has a unique way of reaching each one of us, tailored to each individual’s capacity and predilection.

Photo by Venti Views on Unsplash  (photo cropped by the author)

When the three friends who were sitting beside me rose for communion, I was obliged to get up too, to let them through, and, despite the confusion inside my body, I was pressed from behind by the parishioners moving all together to the pulpit. It was not my first time attending an Anglican service in this non-denominational chapel, and I cupped my hands deferentially to receive Christ’s body, a weightless white disc, and stepped towards another friend in the community, Helen, who was holding the tray of tiny glasses brimming with vermilion liquid, the sacred symbol of the gory story.

At that moment, the blue fire blew abruptly through my heart, it was a torch in my conscience, and a whisper that found its way past my lips.
“I can’t! I can’t!” I breathed, staring at Helen.
“It’s grape juice,” she replied reassuringly, but I stared and repeated, “I can’t!”
I dropped the pale white disc into a tray of ice that just happened to be there, and stepped outside, feeling clean and light. I was aware of how icy the air had suddenly turned and how cleanly it entered my lungs.

I went around to the front of the chapel, where some people were huddling in spots of watery sun while others took shelter in the vestibule. Serenely I joined in the eating and talking. The pastor approached me, my sudden refusal of the holy communion had not escaped him. He asked whether I was a Roman Catholic and when I replied in the negative he invited me to come and see him sometime, adding that he would pray for me. I must have looked nonplussed, for he added benignly,
“But it’s okay.”
That made sense to me and I echoed, “Yes. I know it’s okay.”

We ate, talked, and then carried, washed, dried and packed away the cups and plates and tiny glasses. It was close to twelve when we said good-bye and I drove back home soon thereafter.

The next day (Whit Monday, which in some countries is a public holiday) I caught up with an unfinished, online creative group process I was part of, which involved drawing rainbow labyrinths while connecting specific colours with specific sounds. The colour the group had reached that Sunday happened to have been red, and the associated sound was ‘ê’ (as in red). I selected my red oil pastel and drew the outer paths of my labyrinths while chanting ‘ê’. Then, without any forewarning from my Self, I took a paintbrush, loaded it with acrylic paint labelled ‘Vermillion’ and pulled paths up and down and across between my labyrinths, going in all four directions, and, again, a wind animated my body and I knew: this is my blood.

I became excited, inspired, and squeezed thick red paint from the tube onto my finger and drew my blood thickly over the paths the brush had made. As I did so, I was inhabited increasingly by lightness and joy, as if I were purifying my own soul, my blood and my bloodline. My memories clarified as I sang and I felt the weightless Christ, my own liberated Self, and a joy my body could not have before this. Because I had never been able to stop thinking of Mary, feeling sick at heart all my life about what she had had to endure. Because, you know, Jesus too was covered in vernix at birth, and Mary had to brush her nipple on his cheek beside his mouth so it would open for him to suck her milk. He was born to live with friends and food and go on nice long walks and plant almond trees and trellis vines and give her and Joseph grandchildren, not be crucified by envious men and lies!

I felt that Ruach had broken through historic deeps in my body, she had breathed me, leaped me over a bridge higher than that gruesome consecrated murder on the red and speechless earth. Oh Mary, Mary, is it you or I who’s quite contrary?

Rainbow labyrinths, process art by the author

 

So there you are. This is my Pentecostal record, personal, simple, a single simple woman’s tiny crystal of truth, dictating nothing, prescribing nothing. I will say this, though: we women don’t give birth so you can kill bodies, hopes, trust, dreams, aspirations, natural complexities, and simple, ordinary joys. If you want blood, serve wombs and birth, become a midwife. If you want redemption, then grow the balls to serve the Mysteries of Life.

I thank my friends; Pastor Barry Wittstock and the St Patrick’s Chapel community in Hogsback; and Chantell Dysel, each for your part in this story.

– Silke Heiss, June 2025

  

The cross

It was at one of John Homewood's talks that I first encountered the figure of the cross as a living articulation between our breath and time itself. 

The timeline of our lives creates the horizontal axis of the cross, made up – if you jot down the events of your life – of the buzz and chaos, with its joys and trials, of every human’s count of days on earth. 

When I inspect my own timeline, I have to admit that it’s a pretty ragged thread of sorrows and misfortunes. Until recently, I was embarrassed by the fact that, in terms of actual incidents, my life seems to be peppered by what most of us would, I guess, call misfortune, bad luck and sorrow. I’ve lost that embarrassment as a result of chronologically listing the basic events of my circumstances, and then reflecting on what endures, as follows. 

During a materially comfortable childhood, I witnessed harsh human dissent and loss of self-control as a given.

My family moved to South Africa, where we lived literally on the edge of a military zone called Voortrekkerhoogte (now Thaba Tshwane). The State at that time promoted and defended racist practices by policy, causing my father to declare that he would be quite content if my sisters and I failed Afrikaans at school – that seemed to be the way he felt he could best contribute to the anti-Apartheid struggle. Friends and boyfriends were conscripted and suffered abuse and violence on all levels.

I left home, and experienced armed soldiers searching my room, friends being sjambokked by police, a pregnant lecturer imprisoned without trial. I taught in violent townships, and in tiny sanctuary spaces offered to township children. I lost my sanity, benefited from the balm of therapy.

Mandela was released and the New South Africa came into being.

I married and experienced the gift of motherhood. My husband and I were economically on the margins, however, to save money I did not eat properly, suffered from overwork, broke down and succumbed again to mental illness, from which, again, I managed to recover. My husband was unwilling to continue the marriage and eventually we divorced.

My second marriage gave me deep spiritual fulfilment, my husband and I published many poetry books together, but he was frail, his failing health was ever a shadow over us. Economic pressure was a constant, he carried much debt.

Then my fit, nimble mother suffered a stroke and was consigned to total physical helplessness. My sister lost her sanity, and my beloved husband died.

I published two poetry books solo.

I was required to sell my late husband's house and leave the village that had become my home. At the same time, Trump was making headlines with his tweets.

I was lucky in love and did not have to move alone. Within weeks of our move, Covid and hard lockdown razed human lives and economies. I lost work and marketing opportunities for my new book. Friends and family fell ill.

My father’s memory began to fail and he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, requiring me to run my parents’ household and take responsibility for their daily needs and overall care.

War continued to ruin the beauty of the Middle East.

My sister is currently in a mental institution and I am praying constantly for her. My Beloved’s heart has urged him to leave me for crucial time to himself – whether temporarily or forever is uncertain.

Russia has invaded Ukraine and I hear alternatingly tragic and hopeful details of the victims from friends who have connections there.

So much for the horizontal axis of my personal cross in a broad sweep – living such a timeline is great training in patience, I’ll say that much. And patience – please consider this carefully – does not mean simply waiting for undesirable situations to pass. Patience is the active (gracious) carrying of an unwanted load towards its end. It’s notable that, except for love and marriage, motherhood, the recovery from my illnesses, and the activities of teaching and poetry publishing, none of the other events on my timeline were chosen by me! I couldn’t have asked for a better, or harder, school than this life to teach me a little graciousness.

I wonder, if you were to make a list of events on YOUR timeline, what the ratio of chosen to unchosen would be. How would you rate YOUR ability to carry unwanted burdens?

♥

Now for the vertical axis – the one, which, I recall John Homewood observing, you plumb when you stop focusing on the “school”, that milling chaos called ‘the wheel of life’. I tried to outline it in poem form –

The vertical axis of my cross

is prayer, my heart –

vessel of joy,

 

my pen standing up

for me in spite of trouble,

noting my small noticings –

 

fine sword of God, ensuring anchorage

in places

of peace.

 

Thus, I write

of deer, of dew, of weather and birds –

they are my breath,

 

preserving me, wrapped

in Christ’s playful smile,

on my cross.

 ♥

The loveliest insight, for me, which the above reflections yield is that my chosen, voluntary WORK – my writing (published and unpublished) and my visual art – by and large expresses not the vicissitudes of my timeline, but the spiritual anchor of my self in the vertical axis. I realise that my life’s work, mainly my artistic output, has never not been first and foremost a spiritual path and practice.

All of what I have done and continue to do is subordinate to the naked flame that has steadily been alchemising my soul beyond the edge of time. 

♥ 

As for you – I’d be curious to hear where you feel the ‘vertical axis’ on your cross breathes most freely.

 ♥

Towards breakfast, a flower

Oh, my dear God,
sweet Christ: who would believe

this estuary of us -

who is the river and who

the sound

of

the sea?

Longer than the count of years,

my life has been, and now

you lead me to this threshold -

saturated by peace, and crabs,

kingfishers, and fish,

and fishermen, and other birds.

Keep me here, my darling Lord,

thank you for bringing me through,

to talk with you, at this kind hour.

Before me now: two fishermen,

oaring musically

their small boat, stacked with rods,

towards breakfast.

Ah, this Flower,

singing

on the water!

- Silke Heiss

Cows coming home

I've always thought it lovely that cattle and donkeys stood around while Mary was giving birth to Jesus, and that is partly why I chose the image and the accompanying poem of cattle for Give Your Writing The Edge's December cover photo.

As far as I know, there is nowhere in the Bible to corroborate the presence of farm animals at Christ's birth, which is exactly what makes it, in my opinion, likely to have been the case - people shared quarters with domesticated animals during the time, and in the area, in question, so I imagine it was too obvious a part of the scene for either Matthew or Luke to bother to mention it.

Apart from that, during my years in the Eastern Cape, I learned both to smile and scowl at the free-roaming cattle there. These beautifully well-fed, mighty animals - living testament to that ever fertile, river-rich frontier country - can be destructive and unwanted visitors to your garden, even jumping over and annihilating your fences if they are desperate enough, in the winter months or during drought, for water or fresh green.

They are a liability on the roads, including highways, at times. I would not like to count how many of them are inadvertently hit by vehicles at night on unlit country roads.

Notwithstanding the problems and hazards they bring, the free-roaming cattle of the Eastern Cape are exemplars of some of the finest of their kind.

While they are domesticated to tolerate humans, they are not tame. As far as I know, only the Khoi really ever managed to 'tame' their cattle to the extent that they could ride and command them.

Beyond the legendary beauty of the patterns in a Nguni's hide, and their gorgeously crescented horns, their simultaneously shy and up-yours attitude have endeared them to me. As with all creatures, there are some that are particularly intelligent, sensitive, or bold and curious individuals, while others are simply deeply soporific, apparently bored or indifferent, possibly even a little sly.

They have a lot of work to do, digesting all that green they must eat daily to keep their enormous bodies happy. It would be a challenge to imitate the grace, with which they carry their bulk on stilty legs and delicate toes in the way they do.

Cattle in Auckland, on the R345 between Alice and Hogsback, South Africa

Bull in Summerton Drive, Hogsback, South Africa

December cover for Give Your Writing The Edge

Bull pencil sketch by Silke Heiss

Ushered

I reflected last week on the sacred nature of words, and related this to the language of the heart - that is to say, to that organ, which essentially wants as many happy feelings as can be packed into its lifetime.

Inasmuch as it is associated with consecration, the word 'sacred' is loaded with reverence, which can be risky to joy. If there is an excess of respect, barriers of fear pop up like so many mean little picket fences everywhere, and intelligently happy feelings flee forthwith. 

Of all the instruments we have at our disposal to create happy feelings, language is surely one that immediately takes pride of place. Peruse, for example, these acrobatics from one of the most beautiful clowns the English language ever had - 

"In the beginning God created heaven and earth with, it would appear, Irish labour. It took the Lord six days, and on the seventh he rested, during which time speculative builders put up Kilburn. Kilburn High Street runs three miles, that's why it looks 'shagged out'. A walk through Kilburn has left an indelible blank on my mind. The British, it is said, are made up of four races, the best of these are the Derby and the Oaks.

Kilburn was a melting pot, occasionally stirred by the National Front, an extreme political organisation whose election manifesto was 'I'll punch yer fuckin' 'ead in'. The leaders were any of them that could count up to ten without having to sit down." - from 'The Looney' by Spike Milligan

It just keeps getting hilariouser and hilariouser - so, yes: you'll have to get the book.

My point is that there is room in heaven for the Jabberwocky and all the hobbits' riddles, and even the worst limericks (okay, those might be kept under celestial shadecloth, just in case).

Whenever Christ appears to me, He does so playfully, dancingly, full of youthful sparkle, definitely bringing undiluted happy feelings. (Speaking for myself, I've had to admit that my heart simply can't cope with the crucifixion. I am one of those 'sensitive viewers' who only manage repeatedly to weep over that horror story.) 

Yes, language is sacred, but it is not nailed to a cross. It is free to dance and sing all manner of paths it finds to please human hearts in uncountable ways.

Sure, it can be misled. A writer or speaker can be enticed up all kinds of garden paths, including those in Gethsemane. But that is likely to be the subject of another blog. For now, consider yourselves ushered. Towards reading whatever gives your heart real joy.