Day 981: Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Nothing Stands Alone. And it’s true! We are intrinsically like the Trinity, living in an absolute relatedness. We call this love.

The Christian belief in the Trinity says that God is absolute relatedness. God is our word for the ultimate ecosystem that holds all things in positive relationship (see Colossians 1:15 - 17).

15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together

As long as we’re in honest and loving relationship with what is right in front of us, the Spirit can keep working in us and through us and for us.

Jesus comes as a naked, vulnerable baby, totally dependent upon relationship with others. Naked vulnerability means that we are going to let otherness influence and change us.

When we don’t give other people any power over our lives, when we block them by thinking we can stand alone, or that otherness can’t change us or teach us anything, we are spiritually dead. As our 2022 theme puts it: Nothing Stands Alone. And it’s true! We are intrinsically like the Trinity, living in an absolute relatedness. We call this love.

We really were made for love, and outside of love we die very quickly. If we are going to start with Trinity, then loving relationship is the pattern, the very nature of being for us. But when we start with a philosophical concept of being and then try to convince everyone that this being is, in fact, love, we don’t have a lot of success.

I’ve been a priest for almost fifty-two years and can say that most Christians seem to be afraid of God. We Christians aren’t more loving than anyone else; sometimes, we’re even less loving than other people! In some ways, that’s inevitable if we’re basically relating to God out of fear, and we haven’t been drawn into the love between the Father and the Son by the Spirit.

Jesus says the Spirit is always the hardest to describe, because “the Spirit blows where it will” (see John 3:8). Jesus’ message to us is clear: don’t ever try to control the Spirit and say where it comes from, where it goes, or who has it. It’s called group narcissism whenever we say our group is the only one that has the Spirit or the Truth.

Every group at less mature levels will try to put God in their own pocket and say God only loves their group. Such a belief has nothing to do with the love of God. It isn’t a search for Truth or Holy Mystery, but a search for control.

It’s the search for the small self, the search to make myself feel superior and to stand alone. I’m not in control or in charge of this Holy Mystery. I don’t presume to understand.

All I know is I’m forever being drawn—through everything—each manifestation (epiphany) calling for surrender, communion, and intimacy.

Symbolic of all of us, the “three wise men” traveled long distances from their native religion and country to fittingly bow down before such an unknown Holy Mystery. It always leads to another Epiphany.