Dear Ones of St. Columba's,

Every night when I tuck in my girls I give them a simple blessing. As I trace the sign of the cross on each forehead I say "The Sacred Three be over me, the blessing of the Trinity." I've been doing this since they were small, one of the ways I seek to share and form them in faith through home life and daily routine. 

This Sunday is Trinity Sunday, the day each year when we are invited as Church to contemplate the mystery of our God, who we believe is Three in One - One God in three persons. It's a mysterious and wonderful idea, this doctrine of the Trinity that our foremothers and forefathers discerned in the first few hundred years of the Christian faith. There are lots of ways to explain it, and many books and metaphors and similes that try to capture it. I commend any who are interested to seek them out and see what you can find.

For me, the best description of our God as Trinity is God as Community. In our Western Culture we have this idea that one is the same as individual. We prize the individual person and individual accomplishments. Yet most of us are also aware that there is no "me" without "us." No one truly does anything alone - Olympic athletes have teams of coaches, family, and support. Presidents cannot be elected alone. None of our heroes are truly independent from their communities - be it family, support staff, or other networks of support. We are, all of us, better when we exist within the context of loving and supportive community. 

Why would God be different? The One-ness of God is the one-ness of community. The Trinity is three persons so involved with each other, so intricately dancing together the dance of creation and sustenance and love, that they are one being, one God. 

So when I bless my children each night in the name of the Trinity, I am asking God to include them in the sacred dance of love that is God's own self, the community that is one God. To bless them in the name of the Trinity is to bless them in the name of love that cannot be contained in just one place, one idea, or one individual, and to name them part of a community of faith that is always seeking to imitate the Triune Community that we worship, and to teach them that this God is always and infinitely present to them as they grow up and explore what it means to be part of the community of our family, of this church, and to someday form their own communities of family, love and hope. 

And of course, each time I do it I am reminding myself of the same.

A blessed Trinity Sunday to each and all of you. Thank you for making community here together, with me. 

with care and gratitude,

Alissa