The Trinity and human relationships

Some thoughts developed with a little help from Peter Leithart. By “a little help” I mean things like “forming my understanding and belief in the possibility of everything mentioned here”…

The Father gives the Spirit to the Son; the Son receives the Spirit and then gives the Spirit back to the Father, who receives the Spirit and then gives, etc… this inter-trinitarian giving is the basis of human relationships, and the relationship between God and man.

God gives (he initiates), and we receive. When we receive, then we may give. When we give, we give expecting to receive back something glorified. 

God’s initial gift to us enables us to enter into this Trinitarian dance of gift. That initial gift is the Spirit. When He gives His Spirit to us, we produce the fruit of the Spirit and thus we offer the Spirit back to God. Giving the Spirit back to God, we expect him to return to us glorified, a fresh outpouring of the Spirit that proves even more fruitful than before.

Likewise, God gives people to us (wife, children, friends, even enemies); we receive them and we then give those people back to God. When a husband gives his wife, he expects her to return to him more lovely, for instance. When parents give their children, they receive them back. This is most dramatically illustrated in baptism: the parents hand the child to the minister. The minister baptizes the little one. Then the parents receive their child back, a new creation over which the Spirit now hovers.

More intriguing, when one gives his enemy, he may receive that enemy back as a defeated enemy—or even as a friend. “Vengeance is mine…” and so forth. We give up enemies by forswearing vengeance, bitterness, wrath, and so on, and commit them to God by praying the words of the psalms of complaint.

This shall be sung at Easter by the Trinity Reformed Church choir. Until that time, when the voices of my brothers and sisters are singing it, this recording shall have to do. If you listen to this, stop whatever else you’re doing to take it in.

Flannery O'Connor reads A Good Man is Hard to Find at Notre Dame in 1959, I believe. Good Man is the first Flannery story I read, and it was probably the first story that ever shocked me—my jaw actually dropped. I remained completely startled and unsettled by it in my subsequent readings of it until I heard this recording, when for the first time I could hear how funny it is, too (“his head was as smooth and round as a cabbage…”).

Birmingham Is Not New York: 5 Cautions for Arts Ministry →

Via commentmagazine:

Start with where you are. If your church is in a region with a strong history of quilt making, that should be the starting point for your arts ministry. Don’t open with a white cube gallery space. Take a lot of time to listen to the artists and designers in your church to understand the history and legacy of the creative process in your region. Think outside just painting and architecture. Contra dancing, shape-note singing, and street art murals are a few of the examples of regional art that you ought to spend time thinking about and participating in. Before turning your narthex into a gallery, why not ask experienced woodworkers in your congregation to make a table for communion? Before trying to create a concert space where touring bands can play, support already existing local efforts to promote music.

What if your church is in a region that doesn’t have a strong tradition of anything?

A short Washington & Idaho Railway freight trundles over two of the few remaining rails left on the Palouse. Near Belmont, Washington, mid-December, 2011.

As it happens, my buddy Joel P. King was at the throttle on this one.

Trees in the low winter sun, Columbia County, Washington.