Intercessions ~ Trinity Sunday

On Trinity Sunday,/ we celebrate the inner life of God which is relational and familial./ We ask to be healed of partisan,/ nationalist,/ isolationist,/ selfish thinking./ Restore our belief in the common good./ We pray to the Lord.

We pray for those whose work benefits us in any way./ For those who help to keep us safe and well./ We pray to the Lord.

For the world where it is mired in conflict./ That we would respect the deep dignity of each human person./ That our way of life might be marked by creative non-violence./ We pray to the Lord.

Give us insight and the resolve to heal our savage world./ We ask for world leaders to be honest,/ well-intentioned,/ measured and just./ We pray to the Lord.

For the children who live in danger,/ where there is war,/ domestic violence or poverty./ For the strengthening of those who are parents./ For orphans and the children who have special needs./ We pray to the Lord.

We pray for those who are corrupted:/ murderers,/ exploiters,/ drug and sex traffickers,/ politicians who have stopped serving the people,/ hustlers,/ abusers and liars./ Bless our efforts to make the world a kinder place./ We pray to the Lord.

Tuesday was the 73rd anniversary of D-Day,/ remembering the amphibious landing of allied forces on the Beaches of Normandy./ We pray for the many thousands who died that day./ For the mourners,/ the wounded and those who were lost and never found./ We pray to the Lord.

Trinity: Divine Circle of Returning and Inclusion

God is one, at least the monotheist says. But within God's inner, Trinitarian life there is a community or family of revealing persons. Here, Andre Rublev's icon of the Old Testament Trinity (Genesis 18: 1-15) gives this expression in the three figures sitting within the perfect relational circle we might superimpose over them. 

And then there is a kind of flat, saucer-like circle on the horizontal plane as we realize that two figures - the regal Father on the left and the greening Spirit on the right - are seated on this side of the table while the Son, in deep red and blue, sits on the far side of the table. All the divine life-energies flow counter-clockwise from the radiant Father to the Spirit, to the the Son, returning to the Father. Even the tree and the mountain lean in  towards the Father and his open house.

The icon sends the message: Don't just admire the Trinity, but consciously step into it: And look, there is room right in the middle between the two footstools, for you, and you, and you, and you. We're all God's children. There is room for everyone. This is our announcement!

There are some exclusionary Christians who on judgment day will be shocked to see who's already sitting (joyful and brilliant) within the Holy Circle of Divine Light.

On Trinity Sunday

THIS ICON OF THE HOLY TRINITY was painted in the 15th century by Andrei Rublev who is considered to be the greatest Russian painter of icons. Here, the icon depicts the three persons of the Holy Trinity, foreshadowed under the Oak Tree at Mamre before Abraham and Sarah. This Scriptural account is found in Genesis 18: 1-8. It is a very good scripture to be familiar with. If you have never read it - before continuing, run to it now.

The icon does not attempt to do what a camera would have done had cameras existed then. Rather, using prescribed colors and style, icons depict the holy events and personages in symbolic form. Every earthly event and person is suffused with the light of heaven. Here the three persons of the Trinity symbolically sit around the table of Abraham: the Father is on the left, the Son is in the middle and the Holy Spirit is to the right. Look at the image to study its details, noticing:

• The movement in the icon originates from the Father, then counter clockwise in a circle returning to Him.
• The heads of the Son and Spirit are inclined slightly to the Father - in harmony with His will.
• The color blue signifies divinity. 
• But see, the Father's divinity is concealed,
• The Son's blue fully expresses His divinity,
• While the Spirit's blue-divinity is balanced with the green of energized new life.
• The walking staves of Son and Spirit are leaning in motion, as they have walked with us on earth, while the Father's posture and staff are upright in authority.
• Behind the winged figures are three additional images: mountain, tree and house.
• Notice the mountain and tree are also inclined to the Father.
• Can you feel the circular movement of the Son, Spirit, mountain and tree returning to the Father?
• The icon invites me into that circular movement of again-and-again return.
• In the moment, this is the spiritual life.

All of this to say: God is ONE, but within God there is a community or family of persons, a harmonized relatedness into which we are all invited to share and enjoy. The brilliant colors suggest this joy in a world whose colors are diluted with tears - much as Russia lived in the Medieval world of invasion, poverty and despair at the time of the icon's creation.

But perhaps the icons most marvelous aspect is the house over the Father. Biblically it is the tent of Mamre in which Abraham and Sarah lived, but mystically it is the House of the Father. AND THAT HOUSE IS OPEN. The mission of the Church is simply to declare or proclaim that open house of the Father. The Church loses itself when it no longer proclaims a message of salvation for all, becoming instead a celebration of  the like-minded and well-behaved. 

The mission of the Church is simply to declare that open house of the Father.  Many people don't feel or hear that message coming from the Church. Many people, including very many priests have no sense of the mystical center of the Gospels; they have reduced the Gospel to family values and a sexual ethic. The icon invites us to sit. To look. To feel the inner movement of return. We don't need to think original thoughts about the icon - rather just to be there before it. The first movement of Christianity is God's movement: God present to us, opening to us, inviting us in, long before we even had a thought of God. 

Perhaps one indication of how far we are from this mystical dimension of the Gospels is to observe how antsy we may quickly become sitting before the icon - how strong the urge to runaway from it and to busy ourselves with something else. Resist the impulse. Then, after sitting and gazing, perhaps this:

Your foreshadowing appearance
at the Mamre Mountain
Oh, One-in-Three,
draws us into the energy of return:
from planet-rape and
thingdom come,
from withering children and
industry of war,
from sports idolatry and
the shopping channel,
from kidnapped girls and
thirty-three flavors,
from the embittered heart and
the power contest ~ 
to your open house
of interface and 
circle-dance
in red and blue,
in green and gold.

Intercessions ~ Sunday of the Holy Trinity

On Trinity Sunday we ask that as we are drawn into God's inner life/ we would find not only God but each other/ and all the world in its poverty,/ fear and instability./ We pray to the Lord.

June beings on Monday/ the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus./ We pray to know the loving kindness of God in Christ/ and to allow ourselves to be changed and evolved by that love./ We pray to the Lord.

We entrust the children of the world to our prayer as they face perils in so many places./ We ask for the movement of hearts which will make the care of the world's children a priority of love./ We pray to the Lord.

As June begins we pray for those who will celebrate birthdays,/ anniversaries and other days of remembrance/ asking for gifts of good health,/ peace and safety./ We pray to the Lord.

We pray boldly for an end to wars/ and for our own inner liberation from anything that would prevent the full realization of God's peace and reconciliation in our lives./ We pray to the Lord.

We pray to be careful stewards of our planet,/ using its resources wisely and justly/ and guardians of the animals,/ plants,/ water and air/ as these are God's precious gifts to us./ We pray to the Lord.

And finally we pray for those who have died,/ remembering that so many die violently,/ suddenly,/ alone or without a prayer./ We pray to the Lord. 

Returning To The Father - Praying in the Holy Trinity

CONSCIOUSLY or  unconsciously  we all choose a life-way. In Rublev's Trinity the Father looks at the Spirit. The Son points to the Spirit. The way to God begins and is carried out in the Spirit. God is not an eternal vision but entrance into a dynamic which promises full and fresh life.

Look again, even the mountain and the tree (the terebinth of Mamre) bend or lean towards the Father and his house which is open and welcoming. "In my Father's house there are many dwelling places," Jesus said. Everything leads to the Father's heart - the Spirit, the Son, the elements the plants, the light itself!

And I'm invited too - and every person inhabiting this planet. This means if I take up my place in the opening at my side of the altar, not only will I meet God, but I will meet all the others. This may come as a shock to many people, including many religious people, who think of their religion or relationship as private.

The circles of the Trinity are ever-widening and expanding as my awareness of the others increases - as my heart opens and my sense of active solidarity with others grows. And then nothing can ever be the same. A Sunday TV called The Real Brazil reports that Brazil is the new global competitor in producing military aircraft. Do we really need more war planes? When I realize who is sitting alongside me from this planet, in the Trinitarian Circle, I begin to raise questions like this.

Indeed, one religious sister takes the newspaper  (when everyone is finished with it) cutting out the pictures and article headings  she feels she must pray about. She places them into a kind of scrapbook which she regards as her prayerbook - holding the book open on her lap for at least some of the time she spends in front of the Trinity icon, imagining that these persons in their desperation and struggle are sitting beside her to left and right. I might use the following approach to prayer before the icon as a discipline: 

• Seating myself comfortably, I place the icon at eye level.
• I first observe the Holy Three in conversation with one another.
• The Spirit and the Son in harmony with the Father.
• The mountain and tree leaning in towards the Father's open house.
• There is a circular dynamic of shared divine life and love ~ Spirit and Son to the Father,
• The Father completing the circular movement, returning this life and love to the Spirit.
• I take up my place in this exchange - gently acknowledging my own union with the Spirit.
• And then union with the Son - making the gift of myself to the Father with them and receiving whatever it is that God wants to share of himself with me.
• I might enter this counter-clockwise circular movement each day - perhaps twice a day - and when distracted gently coming back to an awareness of the divine energies shared here. The Church Fathers speak of iron placed in fire and assuming the energies of the fire - though not becoming fire itself.

The Real Brazil show also indicated that Brazil is now the largest producer of designer flip-flops in the world: upscale stores  that sell only the latest in decorator colored and textured flip-flops. It's all the rage, we say. But in Brazil and many other countries, there are also garbage mountains where barefooted children pick through the garbage of the first-world searching for scraps of anything they might salvage - their feet cut up from metal and glass and infected with parasites and disease.

And so, while Rublev's Trinity is indeed a holy icon and to be entered into, venerated and contemplated,  these pictures and thousands of others like them, are part of the icon, equally to be kept near and contemplated:



Child-scavenging On Indonesian Garbage Mountain

Human Trafficking ~ the fastest growing crime on earth

I mustn't run or look away. Religion that doesn't transform or open up hearts is irrelevant. When religion talks about enlightenment it must mean getting out of and beyond myself so that I can see clearly enough to stand in solidarity and to love.

The little girl in the picture here should be in school and playing with happy classmates. Instead she is making bricks. Her future is grim.

Rublev created the Trinity Icon in a medieval world of darkness, slavery, war and  poverty. The discipline of sitting before and even IN the icon calls us to an experience of God in our own dark time, which is restorative, communal and which beautifies and enlivens the world through the transformation of my own heart and mind.

Entering the Trinitarian Circle (5)

IT'S SAID, THE ICON DOES FOR THE EYE what the Word of God does for the ear. And so the Rublev Trinity proclaims in painted image that God is One, but that within God's interior life there is a family or community of persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Furthermore, the icon, with it's empty space opening to the viewer says, God doesn't want to be admired or even just believed in, but God invites us to enter into God's own inner relational life. And sitting around a table is highly symbolic of all that is best in life. Isn't this wonderful! In a world where there is such loneliness, opposition and human degradation, that it matters to God that I exist, that God knows me and includes me: Jesus said, "I have come that they may have life abundantly," John 10:10.

 

It is generally accepted that the angel figure at the left of the table is a symbolic representation of God the Father. The Father is invisible and so the blue of divinity he wears is essentially concealed or hidden. Until Christ, God revealed himself in the mighty storm, the historical story of Israel, a prophet's call.

The Father sits more upright than the other  two who are inclined to the Father in conversation. The Father wears an imperial robe with golden hints.

"The Lord is King; He is clothed with majesty; He is girded with strength. For He established the world which shall not be shaken. Thy throne is prepared of old; Thou art from everlasting," Psalm 92

The colors of the Father's robe seem to have a layered appearance or quality. God is not contained by the limits of doctrinal language or a golden box or decree, but in the ever layering depths of our personal discovery and the unfolding of our hearts.

Each of the three carry a walking staff, but the Father's staff is upright, while the other two are leaning, as if in motion. Two persons of the Trinity have come to earth - the Spirit at the Annunciation and again in the Pentecost. The Son enters the world in the womb of Mary and at Bethlehem.

The figure in the center is believed to be a symbolic representation of Jesus, the Son. His mantle is blue as he fully reveals the Father's divinity. But his tunic is the color of clay-earth or even the dried blood which will be his life-gift. His right arm is over-sized as he seems to lean heavily on the table, which now becomes an altar - the altar of his sacrifice.

Notice that if we follow the lines created by the angel's legs, laps and chests on either side, from bottom to top, they form the shape of a deep cup or chalice and that Jesus, the Son, symbolically sits inside that cup, echoed again in the chalice that remains on the altar and yet again in the space created between the two foot rests.

The foot rests themselves are lovely indicators of God perhaps resting a bit. Why not? The Book of Genesis 2:2 tells us that God rested after he had made everything that was good. And God has gone to a great deal of trouble in coming into our world to retrieve all that is good.  Rather like the parents in Oklahoma, who clawed at the school's rubble until they found the child that was theirs, God will not allow us to be lost to him.

The figure on the right is the Spirit. The Father gazes at the Spirit who, with the Son, inclines his head in a perfect agreement of heart-intention, mind and purpose. And while the Son looks to the Father, he points to the Spirit with his right hand. It appears that the Son is blessing the cup, but art historians tell us that over many centuries of repair, an additional finger was added to the Son's right hand. In actuality, Rublev painted the Son pointing to the Spirit. The Spirit wears a fully revealed divinity-blue and green, the spring's color of regeneration, restoration, renewal and new life.

The Son and the Spirit each wear a golden band over their shoulders. This is called a clavus (once part of Greek and Roman costume indicating rank) and here expressing that the Son and the Spirit are the right and left hands of the Father reaching into the deepest darkness - where our world is weary, tear-soaked and hidden in debilitating fears.

Stepping Up To The Circle Of The Trinity (4)

A FRIEND WROTE SAYING that she was beginning to understand and appreciate the Trinity icon after reading the daily posts. Surely appreciation is increased when we are open and allow ourselves to be taught, but appreciation also increases when we stop to consider the icon and to look at it long and deeply. Never come before an icon as we do a TV commercial selling a product we don't need.

We say that a room is alive with color. Indeed, the icon is alive, but not the same as  lively. The icon  is a place of encounter with the other side, if you will. This doesn't just mean heaven, but there is the other side of my consciousness - my consciousness that isn't wrapped up in this-world concerns, or the masks we wear, or the defenses we create, or the persona we present to appear this way for this person and that way for that person.

Notice at once that while the three figures of the icon are looking at one another, there is also an open space in the front and that we see them full faced. These elements call us to step into the intimacy of the circle they've created around the table and the harmonious conversation that is obviously taking place. Silence is key. If I were to be invited to visit an important person, a pope, president, king or queen, I would never come into the person's presence talking, but I would be silent and wait to be addressed. It is the same with an icon; come into its radiant presence in silence. No hurry!

Circling. When we were little in grade school and getting ready to play a game, more often than not it began with the teacher saying, "Everyone get in a circle."  Or the first dances we learned as children were circle dances. Circle the wagons, we say when there's trouble threatening the group.

Circles invite and are an expression of unity. And here in Rublev's Trinity, the Holy Three are sitting in a circle around the table - the central figure behind and the other two at the sides and even coming around to the front. This circle seems to reach out to include or draw in the viewer.

But then there is a second circle in which the figures reside. If we were to place the top of a glass tumbler flat over the figures in the icon, they would fit perfectly inside the circle created by it.  And if that circle were to be divided up, pie-like into eight segments, each segment would contain a kind of echo of the opposite. This is a reflection of the divine equality of the figures. 

Lastly, there are an additional three circles which are the halos around the heads. The halo means: Pay attention to the face! Pay attention to the face! All of this circling suggests that this image is about community, conversation, intimacy, family, relationship, union.

There is of course, the movement of the figures that happens just because the three are seated so intimately. But there is also the active inner circular sharing of divine energies, divine life and love - one to the other, each holding simultaneously the fullness of who and what God is! Perichoresis is the technical  Greek  word that names that relational circling and sharing of divinity among the persons of the Trinity. Even the sound of the word seems to have movement and life in it! A circle might then be a better image for the Trinitarian sharing  than a shamrock or triangle, both of which are static and lifeless, while the circle is dynamic.

Contemplate the circular movements within the icon. But remain an observant outsider for now; don't take up your seat in the empty space just yet.

A Scriptural Basis for the Old Testament Trinity Icon (3)

THE SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT WHICH FORMS THE BASIS of the Old Testament Trinity icon is found in Genesis 18:1-8. The Lord appeared to Abraham on a hot afternoon. Perhaps Abraham had dozed off from the heat, but when he looked up he saw three men standing nearby. Abraham ran to meet them, bowed and said:

"O sirs, if perchance I find favor with you, please do not pass by without stopping with your servant."

The three visitors accepted Abraham's kind invitation: water for their feet  and the comfort of a shade  tree. He and Sarah prepared a generous meal - she making cakes with the best flour and a veal dish prepared from their herd. He then waited on his guests.

The visitors asked where Sarah was and predicted that upon their return, at the end of a year, she would have a baby, even though the two were long beyond child bearing years. But Sarah was listening from the door and thought it funny to hear  she'd have a child, as she was post-menopausal and her husband was, well, - just old. "How can there be marriage pleasure for me?" she wondered out loud.

The messengers either heard or imagined her thoughts and called over to her: "Don't laugh, nothing is too wonderful for God." Of course she denied having laughed, but one messenger said, "Oh yes you did!" A message from God is evidently no laughing matter.

The Hospitality of Abraham and Sarah

Rublev would have been familiar with the icon above, depicting the Genesis account: The Hospitality of Abraham and Sarah. The three messengers are comfortably seated  around a table set with a white cloth, dishes and silverware. Elderly Sarah and Abraham are busy serving  while waiting for the young servant to prepare the fatted calf meal. The scene is so busy it's hard to imagine that the conversation among the three winged messengers was about anything other than the pleasant hospitality being extended to them.

But Rublev, with fresh insight, saw in the Three Messengers a symbolic depiction of the Holy Trinity. And so to emphasize that vision he has cleared the table of everything except the central cup, removed Abraham, Sarah and their farmhand from the scene, straightened up the posture of the angel-visitor on the left and made important color changes. Only the three seated messengers remain, along with  the house, tree and mountain, enabling us to focus all of our energies in contemplation of the Trinitarian Mystery.

Rublev's Old Testament Trinity

But before we do that, we might take a moment to consider Sarah's laughing. We all know that snickering which says, I know best, or That ain't happening, or I won't allow that or some variation of that thinking. The message is essentially I'm in charge. But then  things don't work out my way at all.

Indeed, Sarah was quite accurate in saying she and her husband were beyond child-bearing age, but she had forgotten to let God be God. The God-messenger didn't appreciate her laughing at the news. Lots of Christians live like Sarah, imagining they've got it all figured out - their bases are covered. Or worse still, their prayer is filled with directives for God. They might even deem themselves to be spiritual people, but they are not. Let God be God! Sarah had to learn this, and so do we.

Light in the Darkness ~ The Rublev Trinity (2)

WE'RE TALKING ABOUT AN ICON, SO WE'RE TALKING ABOUT LIGHT. This icon of the Holy Trinity has survived 588 years, including seventy years of violent, destructive Soviet disbelief. How!?

And of course, when we're speaking of an icon's light we're not talking about light-bulb light, or even sunlight, but heaven's light. And heavenly light is not an illuminated geographical place in the sky - but light for our minds. To stand before Rublev's icon of the Holy Trinity is to invite light into our lives. Enlightenment?

American Benedictine Monk, Father Mark Gruber, was staying in an Egyptian desert monastery when a 130 degree heat wave settled over the area surrounding the monastic property. The abbot was afraid that the American guest would die of heat stroke and dehydration  and that he would then have to deal with  the complexities of shipping a deceased American back home. So he had an elderly and frail monk escort the American some miles further into the desert, to the deep cave where the monastery's founder-monk lived for some years - a cave which would be thirty degrees cooler and where there was a  cistern of sweet water.

As the desert road covered holy ground, the journey to the cave needed to be made barefoot. As Father Mark, muttering, mumbling, grumbling and complaining, became aware that the soles of his feet had begun to bleed from the hot sand, the elder barefoot monk scurried ahead, discovering the scorpions that were poised to strike, all the while singing an Arabic hymn which resembled a child's melody. Father Mark remembers the lyrics as something like this:

"O God, I thank you and I praise you for this beautiful day in which you smile upon us with the strength of the sun and the warmth of your heart a furnace of love. I thank you for our founder who came to this barren wasteland to cultivate a garden of gratitude and praise in this house of prayer, this holy place of refreshment in the wilderness." (Journey Back to Eden, Mark Gruber O.S.B,  p. 201)

For starters then, enlightenment might mean: getting free of earthbound concerns, becoming aware of the others, grateful for whatever is good, looking beyond to the holy place of refreshment in the wilderness (which we can name for ourselves).

We might pause for some moments or minutes in silence before Rublev's icon, simply to notice, to consider the light it contains.  Then out of the silence, ask for the gift of light. Be still, and see if anything comes to mind.

Contemplating the Rublev Trinity Icon ~ Getting Ready

ALL OF THE MAJOR RELIGIONS HAVE MYSTICAL TRADITIONS. In Roman Catholicism there are Sts. Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. In Judaism there is Kabbalistic philosophy and theosophy. Sufism is mystical Islam. Shaikh Shabestari, one of the most celebrated 14th century Sufi mystical poets. says this about Christianity.

"Christianity is non-attachment and detachment - freedom from the fetters of imitation are the pith and whole design I see in Christianity."

 But how are we to live this way: without attachments and inwardly free as God's children? Saint Paul tells us:

 "Now brothers and sisters, let your minds dwell on what is true, what is worthy, what is right, what is pure, what is amiable, what is kindly - on everything that is excellent or praiseworthy," (Philippians 4:8).

Perhaps another way of saying this even more succinctly: "Do everything you can to get Christ into your life; there is everything to take him away."

The Eastern Church keeps no particular feast in honor of the Holy Trinity because every liturgy is suffused with Trinitarian references. But the Western Church keeps the Feast of the Holy Trinity as one of the post-Easter Sundays: Pentecost, Trinity, The Body and Blood of Christ.

St. Andrei Rublev holding the Trinity icon 

Saint Andrei Rublev has given the world his icon of the symbolic Holy Trinity, which might help us not only to keep the Trinitarian feast this coming Sunday, but also to live more deeply considered lives as St. Paul suggests in the Philippian verse above and  the more detached life Shaikh Shabestari sees as the design of Christian living.

Andrei Rublev, born around 1360, is considered to be the greatest painter of medieval Russian icons and frescoes. He became a monk of the Trinity~St. Sergius Monastery outside Russia and died around 1430, having moved to the Andronikov Monastery, also near Russia. He is buried in that monastery and was canonized a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church in June of 1988.

He is most well known for his icon sometimes called the Old Testament Trinity, which was painted around 1425. It still exists and is displayed at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. The image is 56" X 46". While the word icon can be used for any kind of image, in its most narrow understanding, it is a painting in egg tempera on wood of sacred persons, done in the Byzantine style.

Rublev didn't invent the idea for the symbolic image of the Trinity. The image is based on the scriptural account in Genesis of the three messengers who visited Abraham and Sarah, to tell them that they would have a son even in their old age. But Rublev simplified the theme, eliminating extraneous parts so that we could focus our attention on the three figures exclusively, seeing in them the anticipation of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity: that there is one God, but within God's inner life, there is a community of persons ~ Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Rublev painted the icon of the Trinity for the monastery's Cathedral of the Holy Trinity - and it is essential to understand this - at a time when Russian life, like much of the medieval world, was very dark, defined by wars, invasions, violence, famine, tremendous poverty, hardship and disease. The black and white 1966 film, Rublev, created during the Soviet years, aptly conveys the desperation of his century.

The Trinity icon is a gift to the whole world, then and now, as it shines with a bright light, announcing the dynamic of God's shared inner life. To the world wherever and whenever it knows desperation and disintegration, the icon silently teaches that within God, there is life, community, family and relationship, and that when all seems lost, we are each invited to enter into that dynamic - a dynamic of transformative shared divine energies.