One of the places I follow along loosely is Porpoise Diving Life. The editor is Bill Dahl. He’s a very interesting guy with a neat purpose for the site. But he needed to take this year off and do some writing, reading and growing. So he asked around for some help to keep things going. I think it’s been a great success. Each month a different person has stepped forward to take the helm and organize the content. The result has been startling, refreshing and riveting. Like the difference between cold clear mountain spring water and fizzy sassy mineral water. Both taste wonderful and slake your thirst, but they have a remarkably different feel in your mouth.
Patrick Oden (of Dual Ravens) and I decided that we’d handle the wheel for month of August. Patrick is also the author of It’s A Dance, a wonderful conversation about perichoresis … the dance of relationship between the Trinity and us. I fell in love with the book. Then I read The Shack and we had visions of doing something that would cross-pollinate the two books. But that never took off. So we’re focusing, instead, on the differences between perichoresis and hierarchy. And best of all … we need you. Yep. You. You with the great ideas, poems, photos, stories, articles, etc.
You see it’s like this:
The Trinity is hard to understand. It’s far too complex to have been made up, and no where do we have it explained to us with any kind of absolute understanding. We’re faced with the fact there’s one God, and yet there is the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They’re all different. But there’s only one God. Unity and Diversity. Three in One. How does this work? Well, there have been a lot of suggestions over the centuries. The latest prevailing attitude has been to see the Trinity as a hierarchy. The Father, then the Son, then the Spirit. But that’s not quite right, because there’s a lot of discussion in Scripture that doesn’t make it all that neat. The Father gives all his authority to the Son, who sends the Spirit, who had already sent the Son. It’s unusual.
Add to this the fact it’s not the kind of relationship we’re used to dealing with in organizations. They love each other. It’s the love and the relationship that is the bond. God is love. There’s no intimidation or manipulation or ambition or dissension. There’s just relationship. And this kind of relationship has been given a name. Perichoresis. Basically this is a big word to say something not that hard to understand, but almost impossible to live. Instead of being a hierarchy, the persons in the Trinity are continually circling around each other, interwoven, interdependent, interpenetrating. Or to put it more simply… the relationship is kinda like a dance.
When the idea of hierarchy really was getting attention it was thought that churches should be modeled on this. So, churches became about authority. From Father to Jesus to Apostles to Pope to Bishops to Priests to the People. Some churches are still like this either explicitly or implicitly.
Notice who is left out. The Holy Spirit. Paul tells us the Holy Spirit works in all of us, and makes a very interesting metaphor. We’re not a hierarchy. We’re a body. Yes, Jesus is the head. But we, the Church, are to be a body. Gathered together in unity, expressing the diversity of the Spirit who works through all of us in different ways. We too are a unity and diversity. However, we still aren’t comfortable with that. The Trinity doesn’t have sin or ambition. We do. In our gathered communities we still tend to manipulate or seek authority or otherwise intimidate others and try to prove we’re somehow better. This seems worth considering. Not leadership or organization topics. Rather ‘dance’ versus ‘power and manipulation’. Perichoresis versus hierarchy and power. This isn’t only something for those high in the hierarchy to consider. We all face this. We all use the tools at our disposal to gain an advantage, stand out, and sometimes push others down and aside.
When we use the tools at our disposal to engage in power and manipulation to subdue others in our presence … by whatever means, we are negating the power of the Gospel in the very space that the Gospel is to be transcendent. So … how should we dress, act, engage? Well … that’s up to you and your particular dance with the Holy Spirit. See, none of us is the same. The rules are all the same, yet they’re all different. All we can do is ask questions of each other … where do you live? How do your neighbors dress? What is your context? What are the local standards? What is welcoming amongst them? How do you create a welcoming environment in your space, where you are free to proclaim the Good News to people so they will hear it from you?”
Please consider writing, musing, considering music, church liturgy, and other forms of God’s call in our lives that has been distorted by grabbing power rather than dancing with the Trinity. We’d love to have articles, poems, stories, videos, paintings, photos, … anything that you create that speaks about the Dance.
If you feel that that tug on your sleeve calling you to join us, please let me know in the comments and I’ll get in contact with you with more details about the whole process.
