Trinity, the Big River

One of the highlights of my mornings are the daily meditations from Richard Rohr, one of the wisest of thinkers in contemporary theology today. If you are interested in receiving these meditations, click here cac.org.

Another highlight is waking up to the river that runs through my back yard. (see below!)

And so this morning, when Richard Rohr's meditation offered the analogy of the river to the Trinity, I was moved, deeply moved. Different expressions of the Trinity have always interested me. Father, Son and Holy Spirit seemed a little one dimensional. When I first heard Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, my heart fluttered a bit. Rohr's analogy here completes the image for me; it is this third dimension I was looking for.

Here is what he says:

"I believe that faith might be precisely that ability to trust the Big River of God's providential love, which is to trust the visible embodiment (the Son), the flow (the Holy Spirit), and the source itself (the Father)."

Rohr goes on to suggests that we must embrace the strength of that Big River flowing through us, acknowledging what a small part of it we really are. For those of us who live around the water, it is easy to be reminded of what a small part of it we are! Faith, Rohr says, is trusting the presence and the flow of that Big River, settling in to the truth that everything is Grace and all will be well.

Rohr concludes today's meditation with comforting truth.

"To stay in God's hands, to trust, means that we usually have to let go of our attachments to feelings--which are going to pass away anyway (which is the irony of it all). People of deep faith develop a high tolerance for ambiguity, and come to recognize that it is only the small self that needs certitude or perfect order all the time. The Godself is perfectly at home in the River of Mystery."