Two Conversations, A Camera, & A Galleon Of Canola Oil.

First, Happy Birthday to Ariel; she turned 18 Tuesday.

When my friend Wes treated me to breakfast yesterday, he said the name Ariel is Hebrew that means The Lion of God; Ariel corrected him saying it means The Lioness of God. Wes countered with the feminine form of the Hebrew word…

I said that I thought Ariel was the name of the Little Mermaid in the Disney movie.

They laughed at me.

Wes and I drove back to my house to smoke our pipes and talk about the Nicene Creed, the nature of the church, Aryanism, and the place of the Holy Spirit in the Trinity.

We’re way too old, but we’d make really great sophomores!

Wes thinks of the church in terms of each local congregation, He cited Christ’s words to seven individual congregations in Revelation, and Paul’s writing epistles addressed to individual congregations in specific cities.

I tend to think of the universal church as all believers living and dead from Adam to unborn generations in the far future, mighty as an army with banners stretching throughout time and eternity.

Pretty high-minded for a guy who seldom attends church, huh?

I feel that God raised up different denominations to fit the individual tastes of different people just as He gives the gift of music. Some folks’ taste runs to rock & roll, some to country western, some to classical.

I could be wrong about this.

Wes says that’s highly likely.

Concerning the Trinity, Wes said his grandfather used the analogy of an old kerosene lamp. The wick burned, the flame flickered, the light touched all corners of the room. Yet all three are one lamp.

Now God is unique.

He is Creator; all other things are created. Therefore, nothing else in the universe is like Him, not exactly like Him. But various analogies from created things can give us hints as to His nature.

For instance, I’ve heard the Trinity compared to solid ice, liquid water, and vaporous steam, different states of the same H2O. I’ve also heard the Trinity compared to an egg, one yoke, one white, one shell = one living egg.

My own favorite analogy is a deep-fried shrimp. The shrimp is the center, the crisp bread coating covers it, the warmth permeates the whole shrimp.

Wes said that comparing the Holy Trinity to butterfly shrimp is silly.

But I happen to like fried shrimp.

Speaking of silly…. No, that’s unkind.

What he’s doing is not silly, (but to me a tad strange):

Wes asked me to take some photos of him with my digital camera so he can post them to an online dating service.

How did couples ever meet before computers?

Thank God that Ginny and I stumbled blindly into eachother 40 years ago. It’s a strange new world now.

Anyhow, Wes wants to date.

Via computer.

So I took a dozen photos of him.

He will chose one to lure a potential mate.

That’s how they say it works anyhow. The computer also says that I’m the millionth visitor and that I’ve won a free dance lesson.

I don’t know which photo Wes will pick, but I think this one portrays him best:

Why is he laughing?

Instead of “Say Cheese” as I snapped the photo, I said, “Wes, look intelligent”.

———

Strange this should come up.

About 18 hours after I wrote Wednesday’s entry, the one about divine healing, Ginny and I attended a pizza party with six or eight other people (Only one of whom had read my blog entry).

Our hostess, a mature lady, suffers from a debilitation illness.

She has good days and bad, and had planned the party on a good day, but last night turned bad for her and she was in considerable pain.

As party conversation gravitated toward healthcare issues, I felt uneasy as I remembered what I’d written that very morning. I excused myself and went outside to smoke a pipe and pray as the conviction grew inside me that I should anoint this woman with oil and pray for her.

I resisted that conviction for as long as I could.

Then, feeling like an utter fool, I blundered into the kitchen looking for some olive oil. A lady there asked what I needed and I said, “You know if she has any olive oil?”.

“No. But I think I saw some canola oil in the cupboard. Would that do?”.

No reason why not. The Scripture just says “oil”, it does not stipulate what kind. I suppose whale oil or peanut oil or 3-in-1 Machine Oil would do just as well. So I said, “Canola oil will do fine”.

She pulled out a gallon jug of the stuff!

I carried it into the party where the sick woman lay on a couch. I dipped my thumb into the oil jug, traced a cross on her forehead, and prayed for her. Not having read my blog, she and most of the others there, had no idea what I was doing, but one caught on and said that for this trick to work you have to use virgin olive oil.

Now, I don’t know how to tell virgin olive oil from the kind that’s been… well, from the other kind.

But I said canola oil would work just fine. After all it is not the oil nor the guy praying but the Lord who raises up the sick. I joked that maybe I should pour the whole galleon on the lady instead of just a dab; that way she’d really be anointed.

Now let me emphasize that everyone at the party knew the lady’s colorful past. In her youth she’d been… Well, let’s just say it was a little too late to worry about virgin oil.

When I said that, the lady and the party-goers roared with laughter.

In fact the whole thing was a hoot! With much joking and commentary and laughter — and maybe a little thinking.

Will my silly ritual restore the lady to health?

I have no idea.

We’ll see.

But, it seemed like the thing to do at the time.

So I did it.

Sometimes trying to live faith in everyday life makes you look like a fool.

I should be used to that by now.