(Photo by Michael Kenna)
One is a doctor.
One is a photographer.
The doctor thinks the human body is fascinating. He understands how the organs and major systems work. He can rattle off an amazing repertoire of insights into cell structure and nutrition absorption all the way up to the complex intermingling of assorted bodily workings. The body, to a large degree, fascinates him because he knows it so well.
My other friend, the photographer, loves the human body as well. He’s taken thousands and thousands of photographs of a wide variety of bodies, of both sexes, of all ages. He can lecture at length about how light bounces off various skin types and how certain poses accentuate certain body parts. He’s fascinated by the body too - even though he has absolutely no idea how it works.
This Sunday is called ‘Trinity Sunday.’ It’s a unique feast because we don’t honor a person or an event – like St. Francis or Christmas - but instead we pay homage to a theological construct. In two thousand years of Christian evolution we have come to the conclusion that God is best understood as a mysterious interplay between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Yes, some people, like my doctor friend, have keen theological insight into what we mean by ‘Trinity.’ Their understanding of scripture, history, ontology, sociology, and philosophy helps them arrive at rather precise conclusions about what God is all about. Meanwhile, other people, like my photographer friend, choose to bask in the presence of its beauty, whose existence inspires great confidence even though they would never attempt to understand it.
On Trinity Sunday, both of these polarities come together; both are accepted, both are honored, and both are equally valid. We acknowledge God in God’s complexity and God in God’s wondrous beauty - for we know that any claim to fully understand God means we have become God.
The soul of this day, then, looks for ways to connect with this numinous force who calls both mind and heart to attention. How do we best understand God – with our heart or head? A bit of both? And how is this Holy Trinity stretching our understanding so that we might learn more about our lives and our world?
I have two friends.
