Trinity Sunday Reflection: The Dynamic Dance Of Divinity
Franciscan Reflections From The Hermitage – The Dynamic Dance Of Divinity – Most Holy Trinity – (John 16:12-15)
Who am I? What defines me? The grand vista contained in the reflection of the past president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki resonates with many Africans: I am an African. I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas, and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our native land…
But Is it only history, place, and relationships that define me as a conscious being?
With practice, it is easy enough to recognise that consciousness is not contained in the string of thoughts parading themselves for attention. Yet, I stub my toe on the curb, and in the throbbing pain I become the total material body, time becomes condensed and those few minutes stretch out forever… And again, stand as a new father and mother, gazing in awe at that new life, and all that I thought defined me becomes a pile of rubble.
We do change and reality also changes; yesterday I was that newborn, I did not experience my changing, yet now I am an elder. I may cling to the yesterday of today, failing to recognise the changes in my new reality, but I cannot outrun my own humanity. Yesterday my partner seemed to define me, but now I am alone. Yesterday my children and grandchildren seemed to define me, but they also move on. Yesterday my work seemed to define me, but now it too has gone.
From the ancients, we have sought to find something unchanging to define ourselves. So it is that the Holy Scriptures define humanity as made in the image and likeness of God, having intrinsic human dignity and sanctity that is ‘inviolable as an indivisible good’. Yet this also appears to have lost its footing as we tweak, pull, and tease to justify our manipulated pecking order of value.
In doing this we have cut off our own dynamic participation in the sacred so as to maintain God’s total immutability and transcendence. This keeps God neatly outside of creation classified according to a hierarchy of relative dignity. The price of this alienation is huge. We need a new paradigm to reset our moral compass.
The theologian Raimon Panikkar describes such a new paradigm. His cosmotheandric intuition is the totally integrated vision of the seamless fabric of the entire reality… the undivided consciousness of the totality. There are not three realities: God, humanity, and the World; but neither is there one, whether God, humanity or the world. Reality is cosmotheandric. It is our way of looking that makes reality appear to us at times under one aspect, at times under another; continually unfolding to horizons. God, humanity, and world are in an intimate and constitutive collaboration to construct Reality, to make history advance, and to continue the dance of creation.
Jesus the Christ, true God, and true Man is the paradigm and the blueprint of all creation and the matrix of our existence also. In Christ, matter is not on its own, nor is humanity on one side and God on the other; none of these intrinsically united dimensions surpass the others so it does not make sense to affirm that Christ is more divine than human or more worldly than heavenly… The veil of separation has been torn, and the integration of reality begins with the redemption of man.
In the Franciscan intellectual tradition of St Bonaventure and Blessed John Duns Scotus, this understanding already started blossoming. Once we have experienced this dynamic imprint of God, we will see it everywhere in creation. The more our perspective is elevated, the more we can experience this integrated vision of the seamless fabric of the entire reality… the undivided consciousness of the totality.
Just as the full humanity of Jesus was brought into unity with the Word, we also are called to bring our very self, our community, and the entire world into unity with the Trinitarian reality out of which everything arises. This does not require any additional ideology to impose on reality.
We are called to overcome our perspective which has been narrowed down and fragmented. This begins by opening and holding a space of silence that overcomes our programming and touches our collective awareness of the transcendent reality. This is how we participate in the dynamic life of the Trinity.
Living out of this contemplative dimension of recaptured innocence frees us from the longing for perfection, the longing to be better than the next, to open ourselves to this triple dimension of reality, open to others, to the world, and God. Our life centred on the goal of achieving harmonious communion with them all.
As the human race, we are slowly coming to perceive the connectivity that has been proclaimed by mystics throughout the ages. This is our new horizon calling us through contemplation of a new and gentler way of living our lives in that dynamic dance of interconnectivity, the ongoing dance of creation.
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