Trinity Exemplified

Hang on, folks, we're going on a ride here. Keep your hands inside the car.


For most of my life, I never felt God was communicating with me. I would meditate, pray, and hope I would feel some sort of energy pass through me in a recognizably Godlike way, but generally felt nothing. It has been only recently that I've thought that God may really be trying to guide me. See post entitled "God speaks in mysterious ways." Maybe it's just knowing what to look for, or being more sensitive to the possibility (or maybe I'm just fooling myself), but I have felt in the last year that God has been speaking to me in a way that I'm able to interpret.  Case in point:

I was sitting outside the Walsh building during lunch recently, reading The Divine Dance, a beautiful book on the Trinity by Fr. Richard Rohr. Rohr describes the Trinity as a Divine Dance between the three manifestations of God and ourselves. I was engrossed in reading throughout my lunch hour.

I got up to return to the office when I suddenly saw a little house sparrow chasing one of those ubiquitous, tiny white moths. I was mesmerized by the action: The moth gave the sparrow quite a chase, and suddenly another little sparrow joined in. Finally, they chased the moth into a bush, where a third little sparrow was waiting. Suddenly the moth was gone. I don't know which sparrow got it, but one (or all) apparently did.

I had just been reading  in The Divine Dance about how you can begin to understand the three phases of God and the interaction between them and us by sitting and contemplating nature. You find God and understanding in that plant, tree, sky ... or whatever is in view. So did I just witness the Holy Trinity in those three little sparrows in their dance with that poor little moth?

And who does the moth represent? Normally, I think of communion as a way of taking God inside me and then becoming filled with the Holy Spirit. Could God also consume me and unite with me that way? Was I the moth?

A chill runs down my spine.