This painting was created by Jan Richardson, an ordained UMC minister/artist, and one of my favorite writers. Richardson's book, Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas, is like a second-Bible for me. In Night Visions, Richardson uses poetry, artwork, and reflections to explore the images of Advent and Christmas. I used this book to heal from all three of my labor and deliveries as Richardson intimately weaves together themes like welcome, threshold, and bringing new life into the world.

June 6th was Trinity Sunday and Richardson created the image to the left to recognize this liturgical day. Her image is entitled, "Trinity Sunday: A Spiral Shaped God." Richardson has this to say about Trinity Sunday and her artwork:

Some years ago, at a retreat center in Ontario, I led a retreat in which we explored some of the riches that come to us from Celtic Christian traditions. When I saw that our meeting room had a smooth linoleum floor, an idea stirred. After tracking down several rolls of masking tape, I returned to the gathering space and got to work. When I finished a couple hours later, the center of our space held a circle with a triple spiral inside, large enough to use for walking prayer and meditation.

The symbol of the triple spiral is particularly prevalent in Celtic lands, where, in Christian times, it came to signify the Trinity. Evoking the energy, interconnection, and mystery of the triune God, the triple spiral graces such works as the remarkable insular Gospel books of the early medieval period, including the Book of Durrow and the Book of Kells.

On Trinity Sunday, we both celebrate God’s triune nature and also acknowledge the great mystery that it holds. Throughout the centuries, theologians have sought to define just how it is that God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit dwell together and with all of creation. Symbols of the Trinity abound, evidence of our desire to describe a being that comprises a community within itself.

Historically, Celtic Christians offered no systematic theology by which they sought to define the nature and work of Trinity, but evidence of their experience of the triune God abounds. In their poems and prayers, Celtic Christians moved from the abstract to the actual; for them, the triune deity was not a theological concept but rather was deeply embedded in daily life. In the Celtic imagination, God, Christ, and Spirit are intertwined with one another and with all of creation.

This week, as we travel toward Trinity Sunday, I’ll be holding that image of the triple spiral and the community in whose company I walked its path: inward, outward, journeying ever around the mystery at its center. Those walking companions remind me of how we are to be a living sign of the Trinity who dwells in eternal, intertwined relationship within itself and with all creation. As individuals and as communities, we are beckoned to times of spiraling inward, to attend to our own souls. We are propelled, in turn, into times of spiraling outward, to attend to the world beyond us. In all our turnings, the presence of God persists. With you always, Jesus said.

How do you experience the God who exists as a community and invites us to intertwined lives? How does this God become incarnate in the rhythm of your days?

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June 6th, Trinity Sunday, was the one year anniversary of participating in an online creativity circle created by my yoga teacher, Kimberly Wilson, from Tranquil Space Yoga. The online creativity circle had the participants doing various creative endeavors, including morning pages, three longhand written pages done first thing in the morning (as in don't brush teeth, just roll over and start writing).

It was in this online creativity circle, writing my morning pages, that the epiphany came to me about honoring my 10 year at Pilgrims. In my morning pages, I came up with the concept of interviewing 10 clergy women who have been vital to my life throughout the years. I wrote my list in the morning pages, created some draft questions, built up my confidence to write a proposal to receive funds from Pilgrims to cover travel costs for some interviews.

This July, I will facilitate an online creativity circle for Pilgrims and non-Pilgrims. We will do morning pages, read The Artist Way, The Creative Call and The Creative Habit. We will create meditation sanctuaries from the Earth, reflect on the readings, and have old-school "study buddies." I do this to honor a path that has named a creative spirit within me with hopes others will tap into their creative, sacred energy.

Because we are bound together;

Because we belong to each other;

Because we are of the Holy;

I love the Spiral-Shaped image of God and remember and respond to the inward, outward ways of our Center.

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Spiral-Shaped God, copyright Jan Richardson and downloaded with permission.