The Holy Trinity!

Space Jesus-  OK, OK, a triptych, not...  a Trinity!

Yeah, yeah, I know, I know... it doesn't take 12 years of Catholic childhood academia to know this post features only one of the ever iconic trio, namely- The Son (minus The Old Man and the ever lovin' Holy Ghost). Dad had the entire Old Testament to himself, then sonny came along and got his own book, but I don't have the slightest idea what the Holy Ghost was or is, frankly, I don't think any of the priests, brothers or sisters in all those 12 years knew either. It always seemed the lackluster afterthought of what was essentially a two man tag team- was it just a feeling, an amorphous non-corporeal entity, or a white dove that flew around and... and? We never found out, no one ever spoke of "The Ghost," we did speak of the name change however, the "Holy Spirit" was a decidedly better term for that which we couldn't define, describe or identify- it also sounded a tad less spooky and helped delineate it from the other character, the uhhh... Friendly Ghost.

Action "PEEPS" Jesus!    All Photos © Stan Banos 

But then, I could never make sense of "the soul" as a kid either- no idea. For a good while I thought it actually resembled a conch shell and was an actual human organ (physical, spiritual or some miraculous combination thereof) that made its home deep within our chest (where people usually indicated when they spoke of it), somewhere around our heart- or more practically, actually encasing the heart to provide the latter some amount of protection. Now, that made sense! I think my confused and conflated religious imagery may have come from all the depictions of Christ's after burner of a Sacred Heart. I couldn't make sense of his internal combustion engine of a heart with all the fixin's, and for the sake of my prepubescent sanity probably just decided they were rather badly rendered depictions of the more pedestrian, seaside conch shell.

Could never make sense of that triangular women's reproductive system thingie either. It would always appear at the weirdest times and places and had no idea if it represented a demon's head, some stylistic set of moose antlers, or... or? Literally could not make head or tails of the damn thing- was it possible that they were mistakenly depicting it upside down? But even that wouldn't help, seems there was always a bit of artistic license on that one. But I digress, not that there was a point to be made in any of this in the first place.

Get on the Cross Jesus- he makes me smile the most!