Last week, I found out that this Sunday was going to be mine.  I tried to remember…The Sunday after Pentecost…is that a special Sunday?? Anne Marie said—Oh, I think it’s Trinity Sunday.  Oh good, I said.  That’s easier…Which, oddly enough, I believed. Then, I started thinking…

I remember my Physics class in high school—the math nearly did me in but it was absolutely one of my favourite classes.  One of the things I remember was the section on light…and the use of prisms to break apart the light by which we see into its component colours.  It takes their convergence…all of the shades of all of the colours coming together in order for us to behold the fullness that surrounds… Alone, without a prism of some sort, we do not have the means to tease apart the spectrum and bands, but we can know that the light by which we see is itself a fullness.  All around us, every colour! Magnificent.

Yes, this is a homily about the Trinity.

Poets have long refracted life and shone upon what lies within their scope. They have tilted their hearts and listened for the tympanic stirrings of Spring, and the pooling of winter’s resonance. They have filled their ink bottles with the amber of sun, the turquoise flow of sky, of water, of time and knowing…they have filled their bottles, their words, with all the colours within the spectrum of what is real, what is true… and they have written at the convergence of the difficult and the glorious of now and the unknown perhaps of tomorrow.

They have written and left feathers of light bleeding into the spaces of our greatest need.

Still talking about the Trinity.

Three in one…a mystery.  Yet…We are already accustomed to the Many-in-One.  Light—composed of many colours—everything from the spring green of a new leaf to the gradient wonder of the horizon when day cedes to night; a poem—containing word and language, image, observation, cultural context, historical moment, yielding light and nourishment that inspires and sustains.

The Trinity: Three manifestations of God’s generosity and care;  Three perspectives on God’s love.  Love that creates; love that gathers and gives all; and love that knows no bounds of time or space. 

We witness these three perspectives at different moments depending on how we angle our hearts… Love that creates…the beauty of creation; the scientific wonder of a solar panel; the sound of laughter rising from the playground next door… Love that gathers and gives all… The firefighters who worked to exhaustion; the comfort centres that called for donations and volunteers and received in abundance; Love that knows no bounds of time or space…the communion of saints not necessarily canonized whose witness inspires and encourages;  love that moves with us…the always and everywhere love whose embrace is without any sort of border… The love we use to create…and to gather and give… 

All is intertwined…able to be seen and distinguished—we have the stories that bear witness to it…stories in Scripture—from Genesis to the Last Supper to Pentecost—, and stories on two legs, sometimes four legs, stories with deep roots and wide canopies, petals of all colours and configurations…yet mysteriously all one Love at the same time…leaving feathers of light—especially in the places and spaces of greatest need.

And perhaps most of all when we are stiff-necked, cantankerous, and tilting sharply toward the less than light- and life- giving aspects of our humanity.  How often when in that mood has some measure of love intervened…

Walking down the street, grumping a bit in our mind, and a dog makes a bee-line for YOU and only you, just to say Hi.  I see you and want you to know that. Have a slurp.  Pet me.  Feel better.

A friend who hands you a cup of tea and says sit a while with me.

The instinct to approach a stranger with a compliment…and noticing that our own mood improves too.

I used to have a prism on my desk in the library…and I’d gather the kids into line to go back to the classroom by zapping them with a rainbow somewhere on their being.  They had to pay attention and notice when it was their turn…

We don’t outgrow the invitation to pay attention.

Today is Trinity Sunday…Celebrating the union and uniqueness of three facets of love.  And really, aren’t each of those composed of gradients of “colour,” shading, specificity and subtlety…

The author Richard Powers wrote in the Pulitzer prize winning novel, The Overstory:

“There are a hundred thousand species of love…each more ingenious than the last, and every one of them keeps making things.” 

THAT would definitely be difficult to talk about… yet perhaps closer to true than we can even imagine.  Hm… 

For now, though…three.  As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.