Mother Divine Passes. . . Understanding

On Wednesday, March 15, the New York Times reported the death of the former Edna Rose Ritchings at age 91.  Born in Vancouver, Ritchings traveled to Montreal when she was 15 to join a family of followers of Father Divine, a charismatic preacher who ran a huge empire of believers during the 1930s.  She took the name Sweet Angel.

She moved to Father Divine's Philadelphia headquarters of the International Peace Mission Movement to meet Father Divine himself--which she did, becoming his personal stenographer.  Father Divine's first wife, Sister Penny, was black and had died, though her death had never been acknowledged by church officials.  Sweet Angel was white, blonde, and about a head taller than Father Divine, who nevertheless took Sweet Angel to be his second wife.  He maintained, however, that his two wives were one and the same person.

Addressing this tricky issue, Father Divine made the following statement, which ought to be mandatory reading in every writing class everywhere forevermore:

"The individual is the personification of that which expresses personification.  Therefore he comes to be personally the expression of that which was impersonal, and he is the personal expression of it and the personification of the pre-personification of God almighty!"

It's good that he clarified that because I was a little confused at first. . . .