Beloved Friends, 
This Sunday we celebrate “Trinity Sunday.” It is observed every year on the Sunday after Pentecost. It’s not a celebration of a special event, like most of the other holy hoopla days in the church calendar. You won’t find the word “Trinity” mentioned anywhere in the Bible.  Instead, Trinity Sunday is when we commemorate (or sometimes collectively scratch our heads about) a church doctrine or teaching that was hammered out by church leaders over hundreds of years. On the face of it, it’s not the most compelling or deeply personal topic.

I spent the requisite hours mulling over and trying to academically parse this theological concept in seminary with classmates and wrote many a paper on the history and theological impact of the doctrine within the context of our Christian faith. But now, all these years later, as I stand among you in a dynamic, creative and spiritually curious community, I find it more helpful and interesting to step or turn, or as Franciscan priest and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, Richard Rohr would suggest, DANCE in a different direction.

In his book The Divine Dance, Rohr invites us to renew our lives by thinking “trinitarily.” Here are some interesting thoughts from Fr. Rohr from an interview on his book. When asked “Why do you think so many people are excited to read your book and rediscover a Trinitarian God?” He replies:

This idea of a Being sitting out there, critically watching reality and judging it — usually judging it to be inadequate — is not creating happy people, or peaceful people, as we see in our politics. The old paradigm, without us realizing it, has been falling apart.

And then when asked how this reimagining of a more fluid, dynamic, relational understanding of the Divine might help heal our political divides he says this:

I think we all agree, no matter where you stand on the political spectrum, politics is not a happy worldview. It’s inherently dualistic, antagonistic and deceitful. It’s making us long for a bigger frame, a bigger worldview than either/or. Whenever you divide things into two, the mind quickly takes sides. It happens within a nanosecond. You identify with one side instead of the other, and decide that one side is better and the other side is, if not bad, demonic.

We’ve got to get out of this dualistic thinking. That is my most simple definition of what contemplation means: a mind that does not read reality dualistically but is able to hold contradictions until there’s a reconciling third, until there’s a broader frame revealed. I think that’s the law of three. You can’t choose sides but you have to stay in the flow. I think we are so tired of our fighting. Maybe it’s out of desperation that a lot of people are willing to hear this message.

Now THIS is a conversation I think that is worth having. What would happen if we could help turn the page away from dualistic and divisive thinking and instead move or dance our way into a day that is less about choosing side and more about a fuller expression of Love in our lives?

What I read and wonder about as we approach Trinity Sunday is how we, at Trinity, might indeed live into our namesake more and more, emulating the vision set forth in Rohr’s magnificent work describing the Trinity as a community, endlessly giving and receiving love in a relationship that we’ve been created out of and invited into.  What could be more real and meaningful than exactly that?

May you never forget that you are loved.
Lisa

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