A few years ago, during Holy Week, I had the following dream:

I am on a large ferry boat, trying to get somewhere.
I don’t know where. Someone says, “It’s just a wild goose chase.”
Then, someone says there is a bear on the ship. Everyone is afraid.
I go to find it, and someone says, “It’s just a wild goose chase.” I find the bear, and it has a wound on one of its paws that is raw and looks painful. I take some salve out of my pocket and slowly move toward it, talking gently, telling the bear that I want to help. I feel scared.
The bear growls but finally lets me approach. I put salve on its paw.
The bear jumps into the water and swims away. Someone says,
“It’s just a wild goose chase.” The dream ends.

The current use of the idiom, ‘a wild goose chase’, implies a fruitless undertaking, or searching for something that is simply impossible to find. This was how the people in my dream were using it. But there is a deeper, more archetypal, and spiritual meaning in that phrase.

The Celtic Christians of the British Isles during the Middle Ages referred to the Holy Spirit, not as a dove, but as a wild goose. To me, this is a great image. It speaks of a God who refuses to be domesticated, a God who, as C.S. Lewis described Aslan, the lion in the Narnia books, a Christ icon, as “good but not safe.”

Geese also played a role in the life of Saint Martin of Tours. The people of Tours, France, wanted Martin to become their bishop. He had no desire to do so and hid in a barn to avoid the ceremony, but the loud honking of the geese in his hiding place gave him away. So, a disheveled and feather-covered Martin was then led to the church and anointed as bishop.

This wild goose metaphor also reminds me of an image Jesus used, as described in the Gospel of John. He said, “The Spirit is like the wind that blows wherever it wants to. You can hear the wind, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going” (3:8). Perhaps Jesus was recalling the beginning of Genesis in which the Spirit of God, like a wild wind swept over the chaotic waters.

We all have experiences of the wildness in the natural world: the waves crashing on the rocky shore of Lake Superior or an ocean shoreline, a thunderstorm with rain and wind bending the trees, or the wild forest fires burning up north. We can also recall our own experiences of wild emotions and perhaps some wild behavior in our youth.

This Pentecost, I want to affirm the wildness of life and acknowledge the wildness of God. Pentecost declares that our Wild Goose God never tires of chasing us and steering us toward the fullness of life. At the home of famous Psychologist Carl Jung, there is a plaque above the front door: Vocatus atque non vocatus, deus aderit. Bidden or not bidden, God is present.

Jesus spoke of sending us “The Spirit of truth.” The Greek word for truth literally means “unhiddenness.”When I think of the times the Spirit has rushed like the wind into my life, it has not been particularly gentle or dove-like. A wild goose is more like it: confusion, anxiety, even pain, and my own flapping of wings and honking in protest. But eventually, I experienced the mysterious space and peace that came from this “unhiddenness.” Pentecost is a time to be open to a new sweeping of the divine winds, bringing deep truths that summon us to new aspects of life. 

Let us pray with Celtic Christian teacher J. Philip Newell:

“In whirling elemental winds, in the impenetrable mists of dark clouds, in the wild gusts of lashing rain, in the ageless rocks and seas, you are God, and we bless you.

For your untamed creativity, your boundless mystery, and your passionate yearnings, planted deep in the soul of every human being, we give you thanks. Grant us the grace to reclaim these depths, to uncover this treasure, to liberate these longings, and in being set free in our own spirits, to act for the well-being of the world. And assure us again that in becoming like you, we come closer to our true selves, made in the image of outpouring love, born of the free eternal Wind.” Amen.