Image: Poured Into Our Hearts © Jan L. Richardson
Reading from the Epistles, Trinity Sunday, Year C: Romans 5.1-5
And hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love
has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit
that has been given to us.
–Romans 5.5
“So what do you think about the Trinity?” I ask Gary as we drive to the airport, where he will board a plane bound for Virginia to spend the next few days doing concerts there. As we talk, I find myself thinking about how, in the main, I approach the Trinity not so much as something to be grasped intellectually but as something that wants experiencing, that manifests itself in the dynamism of the relationships that exist within it and flow out from it. I am intrigued by how the Trinity continually lives in the tension between concealing and revealing. Enfolding itself in mystery and eluding our attempts to define it, the Trinity also reaches out to make itself known to us, to engage us in the intertwining relationship that dwells at its heart.
I suspect that God takes delight in our desire to know, to understand, to articulate—to “eff the ineffable,” as my Franciscan friend Father Robert says. Yet the real gift of Trinity Sunday may lie in how it invites us to acknowledge the mystery in which the Trinity lives, and to open ourselves to the love that is the nature and essence of the Trinity—the love that imbues and defines every action and aspect of the Divine, which Paul evokes so beautifully in the Epistle reading for this day.
Even as we stretch our minds in our continual quest to know, to glimpse, to perceive, how will we also open our hearts to the love that is the Trinity’s ultimate gift to us?
Poured Into Our Hearts
A Blessing for Trinity Sunday
Like a cup
like a chalice
like a basin
like a bowl
when the Spirit comes
let it find our heart
like this
shaped like something
that knows how to receive
what is given
that knows how to hold
what comes to fill
that knows how to gather itself
around what arrives as
unbidden
unsought
unmeasured
love.
For previous reflections on Trinity Sunday, click the images or titles below.
Trinity Sunday: Drenched in the Mystery
Trinity Sunday: A Spiral-Shaped God
Trinity Sunday: Blessing of the Ordinary
(includes “Blessing the Ordinary”)
Using Jan’s artwork…
To use the image “Poured Into Our Hearts,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!
May 21, 2013 at 8:43 AM |
Thank you for this thoughtful piece. Shaping our hearts, I think, is a lifetime’s work, something always in process.
May 28, 2013 at 10:03 PM |
Amen! Thanks so much, Carol. Blessings.
May 24, 2013 at 10:03 PM |
So beautiful…thank you.
May 28, 2013 at 10:04 PM |
Thank you, Jan! Very grateful. Peace to you.
May 26, 2013 at 1:34 PM |
Thank you Jan for those words re The Trinity especially where you mention ‘experiencing’ that manifests itself, the whole piece is very thought provoking
May 28, 2013 at 10:04 PM |
Many kind thanks, Sandra! Blessings to you.