You can listen to this week’s Devotional here
Author: Chad Glang
Here are two understandings of the Trinity:
From Jim White, FCC Colorado Springs Pastor Emeritus, whom I interviewed in 2003:
I have a Trinitarian view of God. I don’t know if this means God has three natures, or just that we have the capacity to know God through three channels.
–God Above, the transcendent God. I know God through awe experiences: seeing, smelling, and hearing the ocean, or skiing down a slope with my five-year-old on my shoulders, both of us whooping with delight. I am open to the possibility that a beautiful sunset may be just dust motes in the air, but I choose to believe God is behind it.
This is how I understand faith: a choice, not a certainty.
–God Beside, the Christ. Again, we are free to choose to see each other as revelations of God. Relationships work best when we approach them in this I-Thou way.
–God Within, the quiet interiority. That’s why I meditate, which Archibald MacLeish calls “blowing on the coals of your heart.” Sometimes I sense in my breath, “You are not alone.” This is the apophatic approach . . . without images or words. In the end, I trust this more, though I make my living in a cataphatic attempt to talk about God.
From Brother David Steindl-Rast, Benedictine monk and psychologist (https://gratefulness.org on the site, check out the five-minute video, “A Good Day”):
–Silence: The mystery from which all life comes.
–Word: Silence given voice, embodied mystery. Life in all its forms.
–Response: Our capacity to experience awe and gratitude . . . and to act from here, in a way which leads back to Silence.
I am grateful for many experiences of sensing God in these three ways. Here’s one which opened me to the second, God Beside/Embodied Mystery:
I have vivid memory from my time as a student in France, in 1967. I was 19, and we were invited to be companions to kids at a nearby orphanage. Over several visits, I connected with a boy of eight. In our final afternoon together, he went to his bureau, container of all his worldly possessions. He brought out a rare, treasured postage stamp and handed it to me: Un cadeau pour toi, “A gift for you.” I was so touched. I pulled out my wallet and found a memento I prized. “Great! We’ll trade,” I said.
His was crestfallen, his eyes filled with tears. “No, not a trade . . . it’s a gift. I want to give it to you.” I stopped breathing. Oh . . . I had denied him the experience of giving. In my discomfort with the vulnerability of being the receiver, I’d reflexively moved to equalize the relationship. Unaware, acting out of my own feelings, I’d walked on his feelings . . . and his dignity. Nearly sixty years later, I continue to be brought to stillness by this memory. I denied the gift of the stamp; I could not deny the gift of the learning. There’s something more going on here . . . it’s not just about what my limited, if well-intentioned, ego can comprehend.
I didn’t have words for that experience at the time, which was part of its power. Now, the Sanskrit greeting Namaste comes to mind: “The place in me of love and truth and light greets the place in you of love and truth and light.” At a given moment, we may be wearing particular hats, like server and served, but we are all in this together . . . and deep down we are all the same.