every day is a beautiful day

Looks cold out there, but isn't, quite the contrary, as I sit up and look around. Morning comes and evening goes and life goes on for whoever's here.

Seemed like a light enough breakfast, mug of hot black coffee, half a cup of chicken salad, but twenty minutes later bam, zonk, whap, zot, bop, zap, head weighs a ton, neck and shoulders ache, BP 80/46 pulse 72, so a half hour lie down until it passes.

Addressed and thought it solved, but still haven't beat the sudden incapacitating plunge of carbo-coma. Must re-think breakfast, eh? Yesterday, coffee and one crunchy oatmeal cracker: bit hungry but fine and no car-com. Later, from my days in Hobbiton, second breakfast of one thin slice blue cheese, thick slice red tomato, mayonnaise, on one slice dark brown whole wheat bread, and twenty minutes later, biff, bop, zap, whop, down for an hour.

Maybe back to the fifty calorie bowl of instant oatmeal. Gets old after a while, because I enjoy variety not sameness, but I'll try it again, eh?

Friday again: every day is a beautiful day, and life is short and we haven't much Time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us, which is what Time and life are all about, so be quick to love, and make haste to be kind.

In fact, the Holy Spirit; and the Trinity: Trinity Sunday is passed for another round of church years, but I've been contemplating our doctrine of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the trinitarian God we hold as orthodox Christianity.

One day decades ago, an early year in Apalachicola, I'm thinking late 1984 or sometime in 1985, a parishioner posited with me, "I get it about God the Father, and I get it about Jesus, God the Son, but for the life of me I don't get the Holy Spirit, it makes no sense to me, what's that all about, the Holy Spirit?

What did I say, how did I respond? Not "what was my answer?" because only a damn fool knows the answers to religious questions, but how did I respond? Jeepers, I don't know, it was nearly forty years ago, I have no idea. But the conversation returns to mind from Time to Time. Now and then It also comes to mind when I begin worship with the acclamation, "In the Name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit" to set in concrete the reason that we are gathered, before we continue. The Holy Spirit: who or what is the Holy Spirit?

Robert Jenson, my theology professor at seminary said "the Holy Spirit is the love between the Father and the Son". Which I get now, but at the Time it struck me as Binitarian instead of Trinitarian, but that was before (Mark 9:1 again, Revelation 1:12) ἴδωσιν ὁράω εἶδον I saw that a person is not necessarily flesh and blood, a human, visible. Rather, a person may be unseen, perceived, a force, an entity, an energizer, a power. Scholars regard similes and metaphors as pretty much out of bounds when describing God, but I should have remembered my business law courses at university, a corporation is a legal entity, a person. In God talk the Holy Spirit is a person, a force, a power, unseen energy.

Here we go off into the brambles, but I'm thinking of The Energizer Bunny. A battery holds power, electric energy. So a simile: is the Holy Spirit like the unseen energy that causes the light to come on, the energy itself? IDK. What I'm thinking of is more bodily, or seems so. The Holy Spirit is not only something floating around, but God's action, God working in the world around us; because of us, and only because of us, and only if we are there to carry the load. Which means that if we are not, the Holy Spirit is Not - - simile again, like a dead battery, cannot and does not energize.

I Corinthians 6:19, "Don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourselves but to God." So, the Holy Spirit is human after all, the life of each and every human created in the image of God, breathed in and charged up to be God on earth. Which makes each of us God the Holy Spirit.

Still going with metaphors and similes, I have a couple of sets of hearing aids, which I call "my ears". One set of ears is re-chargable, I put them into their little slots in the charger every evening as I leave my bathroom and head for the bedroom, and the next morning they're energized and ready for another day of good listening. For this little mental exercise though, I'm thinking of the set that has batteries. When the battery runs down, I have to put in a new battery. In the pack, the new battery has a little tab on it to keep it turned off and the power saved until it's needed. I'm going with this goofy metaphor that the Holy Spirit is the energy inside the battery, and Baptism is the tab being taken off, and the Holy Spirit energized for the Christian's life.

Each of us part of the Holy Spirit, like worker ants and worker bees. I think I like that better than the idea of us being parts of the Body of Christ.

Anyway, see, I've got heavy on my mind, and this momentary mental diversion has been most helpful.

RSF&PTL