Saturday

Strip of lights to the east is downtown Panama City, due south between me and Shell Island and spread out among the channel marker lights are a few shrimp boats working St. Andrew Bay, strip of lights to the west is the east end of Panama City Beach.

Way too early to operate my magical coffee machine for a cuppa Kona, so a mug of Community coffee and a small glass of Bulgarian style buttermilk from the Tyndall commissary.

Pentecost tomorrow, on the Christian calendar the fiftieth day after Easter dawn. We celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit into the church as told in the story at Acts chapter 2, and wear red to commemorate the tongues of flame that Luke mentions dancing on the heads of the disciples.

Holy Spirit is a mystery, I suppose. Doubtful eisegetic scholarship perhaps, but I like to perceive the Holy Spirit as far back as Genesis 1, “In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was chaos, and vacant, and darkness was upon the face of the abyss; and the (ruach, πνευμα, breath, wind) spirit of Elohim moved over the surface of the waters, and Elohim is saying (this saying I like to understand as logos, the creating word whom Gospel John defines as Jesus Christ) ‘let there be light …’ and there was light.” So, there’s the Holy Spirit already vibrating, moving and shaking; and already knowing what I intended to find, I went into Genesis chapter one and read and found it. In fact, there’s the whole Trinity, all three of them. That it isn’t a rabbinical understanding bothers me not in the least: a story belongs to the reader.

But my favorite impression of the Holy Spirit might be from a summer 2013 Ignatian retreat,my spiritual advisor characterizing the Holy Spirit as “Mary’s husband.” I was astonished, but there’s naught to be gained by arguing. Thinking to “correct” someone about how to understand a story that’s just as much his as mine is arrogance personified, and I’m not that. Besides, faith is not knowledge, it’s making up your own mind about things unseen.

Today is Jeremy's birthday, and the four beloveds are coming over from Tallahassee to celebrate with us. Ribs and carrot cake.

There are mosquitos out here, I’m going inside.

Hey, it's almost tomorrow.