Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Trinity



What if Christians started using their theological resources to celebrate the full range of possible loving relationships, instead of obsessing endlessly over one constricting paradigm of marriage?
The following quotation comes from a meditation by Cynthia Bourgeault for March 15, copyright and distributed by Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation:

“Ternary systems have three independent forces coming together to form something new, a fourth thing. Perhaps the simplest example is a braid. You need at least three sections of hair for a braid to hold; the braid is then a new creation. The interweaving of threeness results in something that didn’t exist before. It is not just a swinging back and forth between two old things that were already there, but a drive into a brand new dimension.
“While a binary system is by nature stable and symmetrical a ternary system is asymmetrical and innovative. Unlike a pendulum, it cannot come to equilibrium within its own orbit; it seeks stability in a new plane, through a resolution that is at the same time a new arising. It corkscrews its way through time, matter, form--whatever plane is at hand--in a riot of uncertainty and new combinations, the whole of which is the fullness of divine reality.”
 
Photos: from Howard Roffman's Three, and the Rublev Trinity (14th century)

1 comment:

  1. Like harmony, when three notes create a fourth level or feeling. This concept comes from a Robert Browning poem, "Abt Vogler": "that out of three sounds he [god]frame not a fourth sound, but a star."

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