The fourth person of the Trinity

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.


The Father will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, in my name....
Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them,
and we will come to them and make our home with them....
— John 14.26, 23

There are actually four persons in the Holy Trinity: you are always included. The essence of the Holy Trinity, the nature of God, is a loving community of persons who are deeply related and who include us, who make their home with us. God is not distant, but surrounding and indwelling. The Trinity is not a tightly closed molecule but a family at a table, your table, our table, always inherently relational and inclusive.

The aim of the spiritual life is not to believe the correct doctrines or understand all things or attain a certain attitude, but to participate in the life of the Holy Trinity, to be a part of the giving and receiving of love, to join in the gathering of all God's Beloved at the table of life. Live today as if you, and everyone else, are the fourth person of the Holy Trinity, as if all of this life and its gifts and struggles, and all the human family, and all our adoration and our squabbles, are all part of this holy family gathering, the family that is God. Live this day as if you are called not to believe in God, but to live in God, to be part of God, to be the fourth person of the Trinity. It's not hard to do, just hard to remember to do. But don't worry about the difficulty: God will love you, and come to you and make her home with you.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

_______________________________

Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
unfoldinglight(at)hotmail.com

God the homemaker

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.



Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.... The Father will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, in my name....
— John 14.23, 26


The image of the Holy Trinity invites us to imagine God as a homemaker, one who creates a loving home for us. God doesn't sit there in some high-end real estate called “Heaven” and wait for us to die and come to God. She comes to us, makes a home—God's home!—with us. And she surrounds us with family: Christ and the Holy Spirit are there for us and with us, like a big brother and sister. The Holy Trinity is loving community— a family. This is the true family to which you belong: not just a little family tree, not a church or denomination, not a culture or a race, but the family of God, the household of the Holy Trinity.


Just as we find it hard to wrap our minds around the infinite and eternal power and majesty of God, God's unknowable transcendence and mighty sovereignty, so we find it hard to fathom God's nearness, God's intimate presence, God's ordinary motherly love, the steady, warm embrace of God's arm around us, with loved ones gathered, bread baking, a soft bed waiting, and a gentle blessing: “Welcome home, love.” God is, above all else, the One who comes to us and makes a home with us. To worship God is sometimes simply to sit in our favorite easy chair in God's home and enjoy being there.


Welcome home, love.



Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve



_______________________________

Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
unfoldinglight(at)hotmail.com

One body

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.

Now you are the body of Christ
and individually members of it.
— 1 Corinthians 12.27

We are not separate things, but all parts of one living Being.
We are no more separate than the fingers on a hand,
the notes in a chord, the words in a sentence,
the flavors in a gourmet dish, the cells in a body.
We are part of one another; we are each other in different ways.
There is one body, and we are all it.

We serve the poor because they are us.
We love the stranger because in them we know ourselves.
We side with the oppressed because they hold our wisdom.
We honor those who are different because they complete us.
We respect those who horrify us, for they are within us.
We bring the Other to our table: it is theirs, for we are theirs.
We include them in our compassion, for we include them.

The Christ that is in you is not separate from the Christ
in the unclean and lepers and drug addicts and terrorists.
Your choosing may be different, but the Spirit is One.
You are not the One, but you are in the One.

This is the mystery of the Holy Trinity, that in all there is One.
There is One of us, and the oneness, the One, is Holy.





Deep Blessings,

Pastor Steve



_______________________________

Copyright (c) 2010
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
unfoldinglight(at)hotmail.com