The Circle Dance
Daily Reading for June 3 • Trinity Sunday
When Nicodemus comes to see Jesus, he comes at night, which is probably the writer’s way of saying that he was in the dark or didn’t get it. Nicodemus is interested in Jesus and what he’s teaching, but he can’t get past his usual way of seeing things. “How can I be born again?” he asks. “I’m already a grown-up.” But as Jesus always seems to be doing, he tells Nicodemus that if he wants to meet God, he’s going to have to let go of those old understandings and see things in a new way. “The wind/spirit blows where it wants to,” he answers Nicodemus, “and you can hear it, but you’ll never know where it came from or where it’s going.” God is always doing more surprising things than we can imagine, right in our midst, if we’re willing and ready to notice.
That’s probably the biggest hint we get about the Trinity—God is always more, and more mysterious and surprising, than we can imagine. The early theologians talked about the three in one as a circle dance—God who creates, the human face of God, and the way God continues to come into our lives, unbidden and unexpected. We experience God in different ways because God is most fundamentally relational.
About fifteen years ago theologian and Roman Catholic nun Sandra M. Schneiders wrote a famous paper entitled, “God Is More Than Two Men and a Bird.” We may use the language of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Old man, young man, the dove or the bird. But it’s just language—it hints at, or points toward, the ways in which we experience God, but it can never fully describe God.
What Nicodemus learns is that if he thinks he knows who God is and what God is all about, then he’s several cards short of a full deck. He cannot predict what the fullness of God is like from just the few cards he has. He has to be willing to let go of his fixed and unchanging ideas. He has to be willing to engage the Spirit and be surprised. We discover God in wrestling with what the Spirit brings—the very wind blows us off our secure footing.
From “Finding God in the Differences” in A Wing and a Prayer by Katharine Jefferts Schori. © 2007. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com
On View: The Father's Embrace by Ruth Councell as seen in Art and Faith - A Spiritual Journey at Episcopal Church and Visual Arts
Paul Marshall has done some looking into the idea of "dance" in early theologians. Our idea of dance seems to come from a misreading of John of Damascus:
The "dance" thing apparently is a mistake, but I think it is an inspired mistake, or move, and hence my later-than usual Saturday dilemma. I want to bring it in, but not at the expense of false etymology (we've not recovered yet from the uninspired mistaken idea
that "liturgy" means "work of the people" rather than "work for the common/public good").
As far as I can tell, Epichooresis, with an accented omega in the antepenult, means "envelopment" when used for the godhead by John of Damascus, or, later," going around" (circumincession in the Latin west). It is about the reciprocal indwelling of each person.
On the other hand, Epichoresis, with an omicron and the accent on the
penult, is the word for dance. It is not a Trinitarian or theological word, but nonetheless for our times it suggests something very helpful, and can get us out of ponderous mode and into playfully contemplative mode.
Posted by Ann Fontaine![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.episcopalcafe.com/thesoul/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 3, 2007 8:21 AM
And how different is envelopment from dancing? One of the great things about modern Arabic writing (I'm told, I can't read it) is that many different words differ only by a mark here or there -- and that good writers use this to be playful in their writing.
I can't resist telling a joke I heard last night from a Baptist with a vodka martini in his hand.
Why don't Baptists make love standing up?
It's too much like dancing.
Posted by John B. Chilton![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.episcopalcafe.com/thesoul/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 3, 2007 8:48 AM
The best view of God that we have is Jesus in the Gospels. Of course, as Bishop Katherine says, that's the human face of God.
Jesus promised the Spirit, the wind, the breath of God, who blows where she will.
Just as Jesus continually surprised his contemporaries, the Spirit surprises us today, guiding us "into all truth" if we pay attention and follow her lead.
But as the Gospel of John says, the Spirit does not speak on her own, but will speak whatever she hears from the Father. Thus the circle of the Trinity.
How dare I venture into discussions of the Trinity with my weak theological resources. "Fools rush in...."
June Butler
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June 3, 2007 3:16 PM