For Father Richard, our stories are found within God and the story of creation. He looks to the generative love of the Trinity as our origin story that begins in Divine Love instead of fear, punishment, isolation, or domination.

Let me share an astounding bit of poetry from Meister Eckhart (1260–1327), the wonderful German Dominican mystic:

Do you want to know
what goes on in the core of the Trinity?
I will tell you.
In the core of the Trinity
the Father laughs
and gives birth to the Son.
The Son laughs back at the Father
and gives birth to the Spirit.
The whole Trinity laughs
and gives birth to us. [1]

God has done only one constant thing since the beginning of time: God has always, forever, and without hesitation loved “the Son” (we can equally and fittingly use “the Daughter” or “the Child”), understood in this sense as creation, the material universe, you and me. The quality of the relationship toward and between each Person is the point, not gender or anything else. This flow of love goes full circle. The divine Child also creates the “Father” precisely as Father—as any parent can attest. A mother or father is not truly a parent until their child returns the flow. Watch the joy and tears on a parent’s face when their little one first says “Mama!” or “Dada!”

The Trinity has tremendous practical, pastoral, and political implications. We don’t have time for anything less than loving! Fear will never build a “new creation” (Galatians 6:15); threat is an entirely bankrupt and false storyline. The lowest level of motivation is guilt, shame, reward, and punishment; it has not moved us anywhere close to a civilization of love. [2]

When we—as individuals, a family, a church, or nation—find ourselves drawing any negative or fearful conclusions about God, we need only look deeply inside ourselves and we will probably find that we are angry and projecting our anger onto God. This very human pattern is illustrated throughout the Bible. [3]

Our sacred stories reflect both the growth and resistance of the human soul. I call it three steps forward, two steps backward. References to the “wrath” of God are examples of two-steps-backward storytelling. Yet the whole story moves slowly and inexorably toward inclusivity, mercy, unconditional love, and forgiveness.

The Trinity beautifully undoes all negativity by a totally positive movement that never reverses its direction. God is always giving, even in those moments when we experience the inaccessibility of love as if it were divine anger. I do not believe there is any wrath in God whatsoever—it’s theologically impossible when God is Trinity. [4]

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John Chaffee Five for Friday

1.
“Oh Humility, that bashful dame, flees the moment you whisper her name.”

• Unknown
   
  Humility is core to what it means to be human.  We run into incredible danger as soon as we treat ourselves as more (or less) than being simply human.

2.
“Insofar as man ‘loses his soul for My sake,’ he becomes Christ, is united with him.”

• Sergius Bulgakov, Orthodox Theologian and Priest
   
  Sergius Bulgakov has been an interesting figure for me to learn from.  Having been raised in Protestantism, I know the works of the Western Church rather well.  Figures such as Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar come to mind.

However, Eastern Orthodoxy has been a more recent exploration and is the home of Sergius Bulkagov.  It has been fascinating to hear what is Eastern Orthodoxy’s starting points, and therefore what conclusions it arrives at…

Conclusions which, in my mind, are refreshingly different than that of Western Christianity.

If you are interested in his work, I suggest starting with his work called The Lamb of God.

3.
“A person who seeks God with true devotion should not be dominated by the literal text, lest he unintentionally and unknowingly receives not God but the things that refer to God; that is, lest he feel a dangerous affection for the words of Scripture instead of for the Word.”

• Maximus the Confessor, 7th Century Christian Monk
   
  This is a tricky one from Maximus.

It tackles head-on our tendency to overvalue the words of the Bible, to the exclusion of who and what they are actually about.  To overvalue the Bible is commonly known as “bibliolatry” and is a mix of the words “Bible” and “idolatry.”

Jesus actually spoke to this tendency in John 5:39-40 (MSG). “You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from me the life you say you want.”

4.
“Don’t preach to people you don’t love. If you don’t love, you have nothing to say that is worth hearing.”

• Vladika Lazar
   
  Love is the only reason we should have to speak comfort or challenge to one another.

5.
“When the Church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.”

• Oscar Romero, Priest and Martyr
   
  Oscar Romero was assassinated/martyred immediately after giving a sermon while standing in the front of the church service and right next to the altar.

There are many reports and conflicting stories, but there is a fair amount of evidence that both the organized crime of the area and the government of El Salvador might have wanted Romero killed.

He has since been canonized as a saint by the Catholic church and is known as a Christian example of care for social justice.

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