That first baptism was pure Spirit in a domestic desert bereft of most refreshment. By the smoky fire that kills over years breath and sight there was no room signs; the Spirit flowed thinner there than the Jordan--that struggling stream-- thinner, but to greater depth. She arose out of the dirt floor, the killing smoke, the anonymity well pleased to be called “Beloved” for the first time heard. Pregnant now with point, with truth, with light she, the prototype of prophecy, left with haste the silent house of fear and burst her kinsfolk’s walls with a joy that overturns hearts, exposing their pale side to sun. That second baptism then was as dry as the first, but this time double— given and received— in the river of an embrace that held on long enough to change the course of hackneyed history. Mary & Liz, John & Jesus: a whole choir of conversion in & ex vitro singing through lone, wilderness voices in harmony an unprecedented song, a revolutionary hymn that always cycles back to the chorus handed down by a Spirit who used to compose in circles before She got round to talking straight.