The Space within the Trinity: All Beings Included
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from a homily by Teri Daily 
on Good Friday, March 31, 2013
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Ministry of the Arts, Mary Southard, used with permission

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​I have a friend who thinks that the Trinity looks like the woman in the image above: a woman who embraces the whole of the earth.  Or, to be more precise, she thinks that the feelings evoked by the image are examples of what it means to live within the Trinity. 

As she sees things, the woman's heart carries a spaciousness, an openness, a wideness, that includes all things.  It is the space within the Trinity.  I ask her about this space and she quotes the pediatrician turned priest, Teri Daily.  "There is a space within the Trinity so vast that it holds all the suffering of the world, all our pain, all of  who we are."  My friend agrees with Teri Daily.  She, too, finds God in the open space.

On Sunday I go to church with my friend.   Reverend Daily prays "in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit."  When my friend hears these words, she does not picture three men dancing in a circle within the godhead.  She quietly whispers to herself: "in the name of the Mother and the Daughter and the divine Breathing." 

My friend is interested in a post-patriarchal understanding of the Trinity: that is, in a way of thinking about it that moves beyond the patriarchal mindset which approaches everything in terms of binaries: order over novelty, predictability over surprise, control over mutuality, reason over feeling, agency over receptivity, humans over earth, men over women, unity over diversity, spirit over flesh.  She knows that many aspects of trinitarian thinking are helpful in moving past these binaries.   We can well imagine "the Father" being surprised by "the Son" and "the Holy Spirit" surprising both of them.  But she also feels that the imagery itself has become too static, too predictable, too routine, thus stifling the spirit behind the imagery.  That's why she sometimes whispers alternatives. including Mother and Daughter and Breathing.  She thinks the freedom to explore comes from spirit itself.  "The Spirit is all about freedom of speech."

A friend criticizes her, worrying that she is not honoring Jesus enough.  She knows that Jesus was a male and she thinks that's kind of good.  "He invites men into post-patriarchal forms of masculinity, where vulnerability replaces control."  But she also feels that the essence of Jesus was his open heart not his gender.  For her his heart can be described on the analogy of a daughter's love as well as a son's love.  And she knows that God is not male either.  She says that the words are chants and that there is no need to imagine the Trinity in exclusively male terms.  "I'm a good translator," she says.. 

​"This is what we see as Christ hangs on the  cross, especially the crucified Christ found in Mark and Matthew.  We  see here a  distance between God the Father and God the Son—an otherness  that feels at that moment like abandonment. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 

But it is not abandonment—not of Jesus, or of the world.  Because as it has been described beautifully by several theologians, at  that moment, as  Christ hangs on the cross, there is  a distance in God—yes.  But it is a distance that actually opens up a space for the whole world.  This is the beauty of the Trinity. 

There is a space within the Trinity so vast that it holds all the suffering of the world, all our pain, all of  who we are.  It is a space bridged by the Holy Spirit, bridged by the love that holds the Trinity together  and infuses everything that lies within that space with that same love. What we see as we gaze at the cross is that  there is nothing outside  of God’s grace and love. 

On Good Friday more so than on any other day,  this is an audacious assertion to make.  In fact, Richard Rohr says that the doctrine of the cross “pushes this [belief] to its utter limits.” He writes:  “The cross says that God can and must be seen in all things,  but most especially in the seemingly sinful, broken and tragic things. 

The  place of the supposed worst becomes the place of the very best.  The mystery of  the cross teaches us to be prepared to be surprised about how and where God  reveals God’s heart.”

The Reverend Teri Daily