On Pentecost and PMTs

When I was about her Highness’s age or perhaps a bit younger, my Mama told me that her favorite color was red. At that moment, I decided that red was my favorite color, too. Even though I probably wear purple more often these days because it’s almost as fun as red but with the advantage of being easier to put outfits together around, red remains my favorite.

Today at church we celebrated Pentecost, when everyone is supposed to wear red to church, and the vestments are red and all the flowers and drapey stuff on the altar and other front-of-the-church fixtures (why yes, I did grow up in a church where the only furniture was chairs and podiums—how could you tell?) are red. The kids made red windsocks with fiery streamers and paraded around them the sanctuary. I was tremendously disappointed that my bright red jeans don’t currently fit, but I made do J

Red is for fire and for the Holy Spirit’s descent like fire on the first Christians at Pentecost—God with them even after Jesus’s ascent—so at Pentecost the church is practically blazing with it. I can’t really grasp it—it’s almost too much for me.

It reminded me of the Tenebrae service. Which seems counter-intuitive, since that service on Good Friday involved every single light in the church being gradually extinguished with each Scripture reading until the moment of Christ’s death, leaving everyone in total darkness. The space that had held the Christ candle (now removed) seemed especially black and empty, and there was a corresponding hollowness in my stomach—that feeling that I get sometimes when it seems like the world itself is empty underneath it all. It feels like the inversion of Pentecost—God wasn’t just gone, but God had been killed.

Except that it wasn’t actually completely dark—the red sanctuary candle reminding us of the eternal presence of God was still glowing in the corner. Even when God was dead, God was there.

In the lab my husband worked in as a graduate student, there was one room that was completely sealed off from light so that they could use special instruments that could count photons. If someone accidentally opened the door and let too much light in, the sensitive photomultiplier tube (PMT) would be overwhelmed and explode. But he also told me that once your eyes adjusted to the darkness, even your human eyes could count the individual photons. It’s kind of miraculous, how our eyes can bear the brilliance of full daylight while also being able to adjust to seeing only the tiniest unit of light.

Sometimes it feels like God’s presence is overflowing, running over and spilling on the floor where we can all splash around, so bright we have to squint. And sometimes it’s just the tiniest point of light, not even bright enough to light our next step. Maybe I can train the eyes of my heart to see the brilliance of God in the same ways—both in the overwhelming fire and in the tiny flicker.