Me:Â Look, all the people in the cafe are mothers and daughters.
Her: Well, everybody is somebody’s child.
Me: True.
Her: Except God, of course.
Me: Well, no, Mary was God’s mother.
Her: I didn’t realise that Jesus and God were brothers.
Me (anxiously though, you know, quite pleased as well that she’s getting the hang of family relationships – I have drawn family trees on the back of envelopes to show her how third cousins work, degrees of cousinship is such a useful thing to know and it’s a bit like public procurement or state aids, so few people know anything about it that even showing a little knowledge is enough to gain you much admiration): No, um, actually, you know, I might be wrong there, I think God is actually Jesus’s father, though of course the Trinity is one of those theological mysteries which are, um, mysterious.
Her: Can I have lemon tart?
Oh my goodness!!!! I can’t wait to see her and hear these bon mots in real life. Sorry, I think you rang earlier but I missed it. Am actually back NEXT weekend not this – hope that doesn’t mean I miss you but I suspect it does .
I think it was St Augustine who said that there qwere no non-heretical doctrines of the Trinity. No-one can grasp it – which is why it gets to be a mystery I suppose.
Every Irish child worth its salt needs to know the difference between a second cousin and a first cousin once removed… it was one of the things I loved about Southern Africa, where they had even more complicated degrees of cousinship to get a handle on
I remember one of my teachers trying to explain the Holy Trinity to us kids in Communion class back in the dark ages. For several years after that I was convinced we were worshipping The Great Shamrock in the Sky.
The Holy Trinity is a lot like a lemon tart. I’ll leave it at that.
Garnished with shamrock?