Good Monday Morning to this week 41/2018
This week I worked my way through a few chapters of “The Divine Dance” by Richard Rohr.
Due to reading it very slowly I’m only halfway through, even after a week. Nevertheless, I’d like to share a few thoughts!
A Space at God’s Table
The Lord appeared to Abraham and he looked up and saw three men standing there. Three angels, perhaps more, Abraham intuitively recognizes this something more and invites them to a meal and rest. He does not join in but observes from afar. Abraham and Sarah seem to see the Holy one in the presence of the three and their first instinct is one of invitation and hospitality, to create a space of food and drink for them. Surely, we ourselves are not invited to this divine table, they presume. The Holy One, in the form of Three – eating and drinking, in infinite hospitality and utter enjoyment between themselves. If we take the depiction of God in the Trinity seriously, we have to say, “In the beginning was the Relationship.
The divine flow of the Trinity provides a framework for our relationships, our self-worth and our spirituality. Beyond doctrine, it illuminates how the integration of the Trinity sets us on a path to spiritual integration, vulnerability and wholeness.
God is a holy community; Father, Son, Spirit. We are called to this, to belong to each other, to be one as God is One.
God is Love and love is unendingly unfolding, permeating and transforming and connecting all that is.
Moving away from a dualistic age to a new consciousness of our three in one relational God.
Many Christians are in their practical life almost mere monotheists, until up along came Paul Young with his best-selling novel, the Shack, bringing the trinity back in a way as not in a long time.
Ancient Greek Fathers depict the Trinity as a round dance, an event that has continued for six thousand years.
It’s a spiritual paradigm shift out of John 3, 5 and 14
Son
God did not send his Son to condemn the world, but to have it saved.
Father
My Father goes on working and so do I.
Holy Spirit
Will teach you all things and remind you of everything Jesus has said.
Instead of God being an “Eternal Threatener”, we have God as “Ultimate Participant”, in everything, both the good and painful.
God being totally inclusive! God with us in all of life instead of standing on the sidelines.
A revelation of God being always involved instead of the in-and-out deity that leaves most of humanity orphaned. Grace is inherent to creation and not an occasional additive that some people occasionally merit.
The implications are staggering: every vital impulse, every force toward the future, every creative momentum, every loving surge, every dash toward beauty, every running toward truth, every ecstasy and every simple goodness, every ambition for wholeness and holiness is the flowing life of the Trinitarian God.
We are in dire need to go from, disconnection from God, but also from ourselves, from each other, from our world, back to grounded reconnection with God, self and others.
Dare we believe even that God sees a bit of “Godself” mirrored in a new form, as God gazes at us?
The divine flow either flows both in and out or it is not flowing at all. Jesus mentions that in verses as “Happy are the merciful, they shall have mercy shown to them”.
Part of our resistance to this mystery of Trinity is what Paul describes not less than God having weakness. “God’s weakness is stronger than human strength”. Really? how could God be weak?
Human strength could be described as self-sufficiency.
God’s weakness could be described as inter-being.
Human strength admires autonomy;
God’s mystery rests in mutuality.
We like control.
God loves vulnerability.
God the All-mighty One – Vulnerability between Three!
We admire needing no one;
The Trinity admires needing, needing everything, total communion with all things and all being. God in total disclosure!
Human strength is in asserting boundaries.
God it seems is in the business of dissolving boundaries.
We can’t resolve the paradox of the Trinity so we confuse unity with uniformity.
God endlessly creates and allows diversity.
God in Three are diverse, different, distinct and yet they are one!
Mother Teresa sums it beautifully in the Eucharist:
We are called to be contemplatives in heart:
Seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, everywhere, all the time and seeing His hand in everything happening.
Seeing and adoring the presence of Jesus, especially in the lowly appearance of bread and the distressing disguise of the poor.
The degree to which you can see the divine image where you’d rather not, tells me how fully the divine image is now operative within you.
Your life is no longer your own. You are instead a two-way reflecting mirror.
An interesting image of Trinity could also be as with atomic power. The power is not to be found in the electrons or neutrons, but the explosive power is found in the interaction between them. This puts the Trinity into a new perspective, doesn’t it!
The mystery of the Three, the Trinity breaks us out of our dualistic impasses, and invites us to enter into another reality!
God for you,
God alongside you,
God within you!
Wishing you a blessed week!
Philemon