The Trinity, like a water wheel

In my Episcopal tradition, among others, we recently celebrated Trinity Sunday. It happens the week after Pentecost — the time when the Holy Spirit comes — and is the day we celebrate the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It is when preachers do their best to explain the unexplainable: how the Father, the Son and the Spirit are all God, three persons, but only one essence. Only one God, monotheistic, but three. Three in one, one in three. Do you understand?

The best explanation I’ve come across doesn’t try to explain how it works but rather helps us know what we should do because of it. This idea is that it is all about relationship. Because God is in three persons, there can be relationship. And that models the relationship we are supposed to have with each other.

Franciscan priest Richard Rohr describes the Trinity as a dance among the three persons and speaks of an image of a water wheel, where each bucket is continually emptying itself into the next. No one bucket is more important than any other. And every bucket is necessary to keep the wheel flowing.

Can you use your creative side to imagine a world where that model would be the basis for all of our relationships? With each other, with ourselves, with God and all of God’s creatures, even with the Earth itself? A world where we aren’t trying to “one-up” each other, or just get all the good we can out of nature and then leave it to rot. But rather, a world where we can truly love each other and the Earth, giving everything we have for another because we are completely certain that we will be filled up in return. Not in the tit-for-tat way of a merely transactional exchange, but rather in the full-of-love way of the circle of the water wheel, of the circle of the Trinity.

And that brings me to a question I recently asked my congregation and now ask you: Why do you come to church — or to whatever your place of worship may be? I believe that the beach or a garden can be just as sacred as the grandest of cathedrals. It is incumbent upon each of us to seek out our place of worship, our holy ground. And then to know why we are there. Some common answers may be things like worship and praise, being steeped in Holy Scripture, community or the music. And these are all good reasons.

But I challenge you to also consider another reason — and that is to practice. To practice what is preached, to practice community, to practice this new way of being that the Trinity invites us into. That is, to practice love. For no matter how wonderful your special sacred place is, no doubt it will also have some things that cause frustration. Other people in the congregation who don’t agree with you. Certain rituals that you could do without. Or maybe it is a mosquito that won’t leave you alone, or the weeds among your prized flowers.

Can you take these moments of frustration and practice pouring out your love on them, too, with the assurance of knowing that you will be filled back up? One practice technique is to dig deep and look below the surface to all that we share in common. If you are having trouble, remember that all humans share 99.9% of their DNA. That is a whole lot of commonality on which to draw — the incredible unity within the diversity.

And know that the water wheel is not a once-and-done phenomenon. Neither is our need for practice. Each time we go around the wheel — get filled up and pour out our love completely, then get filled up again — is another chance to practice. It takes a lifetime of practice. Not that we ever get it perfect, but we get better and develop a deeper understanding and a deeper love.

To me, this is the Holy Trinity at work in the world. May you seek out and find what fills you completely so you can give and love completely.

The Rev. Dr. Lisa Webb is an ordained deacon who serves at Emmanuel Church in Chestertown.