A Blog: Being an Assortment of Random Things That Get My Attention

  Tomorrow is what's known as Trinity Sunday, probably the most confusing festival of the church year. We celebrate a God who is one Person and at the same time three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It's an idea that became codified pretty early on in the history of Christianity, but theologians have struggled down the years to explain it to lay people. For an exhaustive (and exhausting) exploration of the subject, you can check out the Creed of Athanasius, which includes such riveting prose as: "...we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Essence. For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is; such is the Son; and such is the Holy Ghost." He goes on in that vein for several pages. The concept even appears in my work-in-...

Tomorrow is the Feast of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit infused the Apostles and, by Luke's description, lit up their heads with "tongues" of fire. Above is one Eastern Orthodox artist's idea what this might have looked like. Just before the flames, there was a sound of a strong wind. Strange weather, all in all. I love this story. I get to read it tomorrow when St. Andrew's Episcopal Church meets for the first time in person on church grounds (still staying outside) since the Covid thing drove us from the premises and onto Zoom. We'll still be masked in the parking lot, but we're allowed to sing with our masks on, which is a new privilege since last Fall's outdoor service at two parishioners' house.  In past years, I've had the fun of reading it in Italian at St. Paul's in Concord. While St. Andrew's doesn't do the multiple languages thing, I'm still looking forward to it. You see, something like it actually happened to me onc...