With stops, our drive to the “thumb” of Michigan took six hours. It was quite tiring – we’d stayed awake late the previous night, due to Barcelona’s victory over Palmeiras in the Copa Libertadores – and when we arrived at the camp, we wished to rest. Alas, our cabin was filled with Brianna and her noisy teenaged retinue.
One grubby youngster, Noah, unknown to us, is Brianna’s new boyfriend of some few days. The other teenagers look ganglier and greasier than last year.
“Let’s turn around and leave,” said Karin.
“Yes! Yes!” I agreed.
But we didn’t.
Instead, we went to the church service. The speaker posited a “social trinitarian” conception of the Godhead, on the basis of which he argued
for the value of community – and, by extension,
against leaving the church. He showed Andrei Rublev’s famous painting of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit seated together at a table. “This is a picture of God,” he said.
I was glad to view that lovely painting. But I recalled that other pictures show the Godhead as one person with three faces. The “social” doctrine isn’t the only account of the Trinity.
(Not that the speaker
needed that doctrine to make his point. Community can be important even if it doesn’t exist
within the Godhead.)
After church, everyone lined up for ice-cream, which was served in heaping portions. This photo shows me eating a “single.”
