A Spirited Friday Five

This week's RevGalBlogPals' Friday Five:

Thinking about all the gifts of the spirit and what Peter said of the "last days"......


Have you or anyone you know:

1. ...ever experienced a prophesy (vision or dream) that came true?
When I was a child I dreamed that an old silver poplar stump at the edge of our lawn suddenly sprouted a new shoot; in the dream the sprout grew before my eyes like a stop-motion film. Well, the next spring this indeed happened, and the idea of "prophesying" this event sent a shiver down me timbers, so to speak, at the time. But in retrospect I suspect that my dream had more to do with my early botanical observational skills, watching a lot of nature programs on TV, perhaps a dash of Isaiah stuck in my young head from the Advent lectionary and the fact that silver poplars are weedy, invasive things that you really can never get rid of.

2. ...dreamed of a stranger, then actually met them later?
Not really...unless you count dreams of a faceless, not-quite-defined love interest...which, to my amazement and delight, did come true.

3. ...seen a wonder in heaven? (including UFO's)
Meteor showers are a wonder, to me. As are total eclipses. Double rainbows. The northern lights. Sandhill cranes. Bald eagles. The other day a military jet came zipping past the treetops near Cold Comfort Cottage waaaay too low for my comfort level; that was a wonder, albeit not a good one.

4. ...seen a "sign" on the earth?
Does this count? A church in the area had, on its roadside signboard, "Under the Same Management For 2,000 Years!" I thought that was rather clever.

Seriously: Once, many years ago when I was in college, some friends and I were at church for one reason or another, when we happened to look outside and saw a resident of the mental health group home down the street doing the Thorazine shuffle down the sidwalk, muttering to herself as she sprinkled a box of Morton salt onto the cement. After a few moments of silence as we watched, one of my companions quoted, "'You are the salt of the earth.'" It was one of those things-that-make-you-go-hmmm-moments.

5. ...experienced knowledge of another language without ever having studied it?

Let's see...I used to be able to carry on a fairly understandable two-way conversation with the late Cody using his unique repertoire of growly Dog-lish. But as far as human beings, no. Although now that I am the owner of a nifty new cell phone with enhanced text-messaging capability, it would be nice to suddenly be able to type in txt msg without spending twice as much time thinking about abbreviations as I'd have spent typing the whole word in the first place.

Bonus Question: What would a modern day news coverage of the first Pentecost have sounded like?
I'm guessing there probably wouldn't be any news coverage of it, in order to save time for really important news like celebrity baby bumps and who got kicked off Dancing With the Stars this week.