Divine relationality.
- heather
- Jun 15
- 5 min read
Updated: Jun 27
The invitation of Trinity Sunday, now two weeks behind us, extends far beyond a single day of celebration. It calls us to recognize the divine relationality pulsing through every moment, every encounter, every breath. It invites us to see ourselves not as separate beings trying to connect with God, but as expressions of the very divine life that is always and already connecting, creating, and becoming.
As Bruteau beautifully expresses it in God's Ecstasy: The Creation of a Self-Creating World, "My hope is that others will get a sense of how the universe is radiant and exciting and how we are poised right on the creative edge, right where the new action is happening. God's action, our action."
We stand at this creative edge every moment. In our relationships, in our communities, in our response to the ecological crisis, in every choice to love rather than fear—we are participating in the ongoing creation of the universe. We are co-creators with the Trinity, called to contribute to this self-creating cosmos that is God's ecstasy made manifest.
May we open our eyes to see the Trinity dancing in the quantum foam and the spiral galaxies, in the mycorrhizal networks beneath our feet and the neural networks within our minds, in the love that flows between friends and the right action that emerges from community. May we know ourselves as beloved participants in this cosmic dance of divine self-giving.
The whole earth, and we ourselves, are indeed full of God's glory,
Heather
Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses
*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*
Monday, June 16th with Heather
[Holy God, Holy Strong One, Holy Not Death One, Have Mercy On Us]
Wednesday, June 18th with Heather
Reading: “Randomness, the pool of all possibilities, is part of how it’s done. So is spontaneous order, and adaptation by natural selection. What we now call complexity, and recognize as doing its creative work on the very edge of chaos, is at the heart of this miraculous picture. There may not be an external Designer and a micro-managing Providence from the outside, but neither is the world devoid of divinity. The divinity is so intimately present in the world that the world can be regarded as an incarnate expression of the Trinity, as creative, as expansive, as conscious, as self-realizing and self-sharing.” – Beatrice Bruteau, God’s Ecstasy: The Creation of a Self-Creating World, p. 9-10.
Chant: O Sacred Three, encircle me — The Oriental Orthodox Order in the West
Thursday, June 19th with Catherine
Reading: “Once, I lived on the tarred, lonely highways of truth―slugging towards the looming horizons―the promised dwelling places for those who did not waver. The whole world was about being either right or wrong. I was either lost or found. That was many years ago though. Today, when I meet people, I recognize how utterly beyond right and wrong they are―how their lives are symphonies beyond orchestration, how their mistakes and failings are actually cosmic explorations on a scale grander and of a texture softer than our most dedicated rule-books could possibly account for. You see, something happened on my way―and I lost my coordinates, my map, my directives. Now the whole journey is the destination―and each point, each barren point, just as noble as the final dot. Every splotch of ink is become to me a fresco of wisdom, a beehive of honey, a lovely place―and every aching voice a heavenly choir. The world is no longer desolate and empty and exclusive; she is now a wispy spirit, whose fingers flirt through the wind―a million roads where only one once lay. And I need not be certain about the road travelled―since I arrived the self-same moment I set out.” — Bayo Akomolafe
Chant: Be right here, in the Heart of God — Henry Schoenfield
Friday, June 20th with Catherine
Reading: 'A Slower Urgency' by Bayo Akomolafe
“… to ‘slow down’… seems like the wrong thing to do when there’s fire on the mountain. But … in ‘hurrying up’ all the time, we often lose sight of the abundance of resources that might help us meet today’s most challenging crises. We rush through into the same patterns we are used to. Of course, there isn’t a single way to respond to crisis; there is no universally correct way. However the call to slow down works to bring us face to face with the invisible, the hidden, the unremarked, the yet-to-be-resolved…
“Slowing down is … about lingering in the places we are not used to. Seeking out new questions. Becoming accountable to more than what rests on the surface. Seeking roots. Slowing down is taking care of ghosts, hugging monsters, sharing silence… the call to slow down reminds us that we do not simply act upon the world (as if the world were external to our actions, or as if we were external to it), we are the world in its ongoing action-ing.
“The world is a going-on together. A becoming-together. The idea of slowing down is not about getting answers, it is about questioning our questions.”
Chant: Come to know the one in the presence before you, and everything hidden, all will be revealed — Darlene Franz
Saturday, June 21st with Catherine
Reading: 'The Storm at Sea'
“On that day as evening drew on, Jesus said to the disciples, “Let us cross to the other side.” Leaving the crowd, they took him with them just as he was. And other boats were with him. A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat so that it was already filling up. Jesus was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. They woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up, rebuked the wind and said to the sea: “Quiet! Be still!” The wind ceased and there was great calm. Then he said to them, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” They were filled with great awe and said to one another “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?” — Mark 4:35-41, transl. New American Bible
Chant: Peace be still, peace be still, the storm rages, peace be still
Sunday, June 22nd with Catherine
Reading: “…it is not by our hand but by earth and spirit and grace that all things are done…we are…at best loving midwives, participants in a process much larger than we. If we are quiet and listen and feel how things move, perhaps we will be wise enough to put our hands on what waits to be born, and bless it with kindness and care.” — Wayne Muller, Sabbath, p.175-6
Chant: Draw us deeper into silence, draw us into you. Draw us deeper into stillness, draw us into you. — Henry Schoenfield
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