2014.06.15 Trinity? What's That?

Who knows? I try, anyway.

It’s an early Christian stunt, not to divide Divinity up into equal parts like ancient Gaul, but to describe distinct spiritual experiences of the one living God, important enough to name each separately yet to assert that each never exists apart from the whole. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. God is both. Godde as dynamism creates all life, ignites all life, and connects all life—all the time, all three. Trinity is the Christian name for God. Here is a lorica, a Celtic symbol associated with St. Patrick and the hymn we sing to the Trinity.

A lorica was a breastplate, armor that covered the chest. Today we might call this a bulletproof vest. Biblically, it is symbolic of the armor of Christ, an internalized protection against temptations to succumb to maleficence. (Ephesian 6:11) Here it is, according to Augustine of Hippo.

Each in each, and all in each, and each in all, and all in all, and all are one.

Say this very fast and you might feel dizzy.  What might it have been like to come up with  this idea?

The small group who knew Jesus well didn’t come up with doctrines immediately after Jesus died. They had no ritualized funeral, no rich collation. I bet they did what we do: sat around and talked about the one who had died, shared memories, cried and laughed. Time passed. Like us, they didn’t forget. You don’t when you really love someone.

Eventually, I guess someone came up with a strange idea:  What if Jesus the Christ was divinely human? After a silence, they all chimed in at once.
   
    Are you kidding? There’s only one God. 
    Yes, but . . . 
    Crazy heretic!
    Well, he was kinda special, healing and all. A mensh (Yiddish: person of integrity and honor.)
    Who asked you, woman?
    All his oddball teaching, too. Oi vey!
    The authorities killed him for that, so shut up already.
    Holy maybe, but not divine, not God. 
    I’m going home. Come on. Why are you all sitting there like stones? We’re all meshugga. (Hebrew for idiotic, nuts.)
    Or, it’s a miracle.
    Sheesh!
    Wait. Listen. If Jesus was divinely human then so, just by being human, are all of us.

They sat motionless. If Jesus was a divine human, then so are we?

With a staggering degree of imperfect simultaneity, this tiny band breathed: O, my God.
             (This is what you say when you recognize God in something.)
                                               

Still, who, in fact, would sign on to such an idea? Some did. Some ran like hell. It’s the same now.
   

Yet these beginners kept breathing their idea. The news spread, as all good gossip must, spirit-motioned or not. We could say that’s how the Trinity got going and took off.  

OR, we could stay with St. Augustine who later identified this idea as something they’d always intuited: God is simultaneously Lover, Beloved, and Love itself. 

OR, we could ask the beasts. Remember Moley from The Wind in the Willows? Here's a Trinity/God story.






Mole and his best buddy Rat cruised the river in a small boat on an errand of true mercy. Their good friend Otter, despite strenuous efforts, was unable to find his lost baby son, Portly. Despair possessed Otter’s heart. Rat and Mole instructed their friend to sit on the river bank and wait. The two entered treacherous waters pulled along by the sounds of piping. Rat was transported by “this new divine thing that caught up his helpless soul and swung and dandled it, a powerless but happy infant in a strong sustaining grasp.”

Mole, more empirical than Rat, heard nothing and rowed on, Rat all the while exuding rapture. Then Mole heard and was transfixed. Soon “the clear imperious summons that marched hand-in-hand with the intoxicating melody imposed its will on Mole, and mechanically he bent to his oars again.” They moored at a small island patch. “Then suddenly Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror—indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy—but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near.” Mole is smitten.

In summary, the two followed the music and met a demi-god piping a panegyrical lullaby. Nestled asleep between the hooves was the round pudgy little baby otter. They awakened him and returned him to Otter who had waited “in dumb patience.” (Now ain't that a truth?) Otter gave a joyous bark and ran to embrace his tiny “prodigal” son.

The rescuers struggled to understand what happened, exactly. The Vision had vanished, the music replaced by bird songs. “For this is the last best gift that the kindly demi-god is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness.”

But what does this mean?”asked the exhausted little mole. Silence. His friend, the weary Rat, was fast asleep.

The grace of Jesus Christ, the love of Godde, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you, each and all, all ways. Amen.

2014.04.20 Eastering, 2014

How many “easters” does it take to make a resurrection? 

Answer....... depends on your own faith so it’s up for grabs. It could be none, or it could be only one, or it could be many. I say it takes daily attentiveness to the ways in which the Spirit of divinity makes things rise and arise, seeking new life always, over and over.  Will you notice?

What eastering means to me is that life’s spiritual purpose is to go around fostering as many resurrections as possible. For me that means imitating God in my own far-from-divine-but-terribly- sincere ways—and failing lots. And I wouldn't want to leave Jesus out because he lived resrrrection much better than I ever could, and in a way that his followers realized that they had seen God in action.

 
Most of us want to make everything happy, but sometimes things that need to rise up in you or someone else, are not so immediately joyful, certainly not worthy of multiple alleluias. Take, for example an old wound that still needs healing, or a resentment or grudge you’ve kept in hibernation in the wintry soil of your soul because you are afraid of its power to mess up your life. Let it be resurrected; let it come into the light.

I swear that God Creator resurrected Jesus, not because he was so perfect and good, but because God wanted to see Jesus’ face, alive and bright—always. And perhaps to say thank you.

Eastering is dynamic, energetic, and often demanding. You and God somehow together have to consent to it, as near-death stories tell us.  But that’s true even if you don’t biologically die. Death is not a necessary condition for resurrection. Also, there are many ways to “die” or be “dead.” 

For years I’d harbored a resentment against the bishop who had rejected me for ordination. It was buried so deep I didn’t even know it was there until, in a different diocese, I saw him and freaked. He should have been dead by now, I thought. I didn’t resurrect him, but after lots of prayer, conversation, and reflection, I did invite him to lunch and told him how I felt. He listened and said, more than once, that he was “so glad” I did this. He paid for lunch.

Still and all, capital-R Resurrection remains a mystery and a hope. It’s a divine action we don’t control. None of our business anyway. Metaphorically, however, easter always looks the same—coming out of darkness into light. 

Here’s an eastering image I love in the marvelous book length parable by Kenneth Grahame called The Wind in the Willows.

  
“The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First the brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said ‘Bother!’ and ‘O blow!’ and also ‘Hang spring-cleaning!’ and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat. Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the gavelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to the sun and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, ‘Up we go! Up we go!’ till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow.”

                                                     
                                                     
                                                      

What needs eastering in your life? What ought to die? What be resurrected?—with God’s help, of course because such things need assists, which begin from within or without or both.

May the one holy and living God adorn you with all loveliness, garland each daffodil with a golden halo, infuse each weeny sound with eternality, radiate the cosmos with glory, plant love in all things, make you wise in your bones, and deal out grace all round like a profligate gambler. AMEN.