Yours is the flow
That created kindness
You are the Dance
That ignites all Light
You are the Three
Who contain all Oneness
In You we gaze
With Single sight
Abba
You ground all things eternal
And kiss the earth with glad embrace
Christ the Son
In a world of sorrows
Transfigures pain with healing grace
Spirit of Love
Sows new creation
In every soil weak or strong
Your beloved
Mirrors every gesture
In this our wild,
Reconciling song!
God alone
There is no other
Apart from You what can take form?
You are the play in every atom
Trinity
In You we’re born
This hour brings sorrow and challenge
Never before have we faced so much;
Upon Your goodness we’ll incarnate
Release our hands for Your healing touch
Bound to You
We’re Your wounded healers
Binding earth
With heaven’s balm
Boundless here in realms unscripted
Tree of Life
Is your free-verse psalm
And so today we dance Your circle
Rhythm of life Your cadence grows;
Let the circle be unbroken
Drawing all in
To Your radiant flow.
– In honor of the release of The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation, the book I collaborated on with Fr. Richard Rohr.
(As I wrote when penning this, five years ago…)
Sometimes, I take some faltering steps in a verse-writing direction. This is one of those times. I imagine this poem sung aloud, sounding something like Kevin Prosch‘s song ‘The Wheel of God.’ The lyrics are inspired by some delving I’ve been doing into what Phyllis Tickle names as one of the deepest mysteries the Christian faith has been called to steward – the revelation of God-as-community, the perfect Relationship: the Trinity.
My own sense of the fellowship of Godhead was nurtured in my ‘church life‘ (aka house/organic/simple church) days by voices like Frank Viola in From Eternity to Here or Milt Rodriguez in The Community Life of God. This haunting sense of the significance of Trinity as the prime metaphor for God was deepened in my emerging church engagement via Ian Mobsby‘s The Becoming of G-D, among other sources. And of course, there’s that little book I endorsed once upon a time, Paul Young‘s The Shack, with its marvelous and subversive portrait of a God who defers in love to each portion of Godself, and wishes to make their “especially fond” fellowship planetary in scope.
Most recently, I’ve been experiencing a veritable Trinitarian renaissance while doing the dishes. This is thanks to both Baxter Kruger‘s amazing teaching – in book form in The Great Dance, & in MP3 form via Grace Communion International‘s free series Dancing with the Trinity – and two awesome teaching series from Richard Rohr (on the latter joined by Cynthia Bourgeault): The Divine Dance: Exploring the Mystery of Trinity and The Shape of God: Deepening the Mystery of Trinity. I’ve begun to see both Trinity-as-Relationship and Trinity-as-Process as holding both the promise and the delivery of transformative change of most significant spiritual, political, and ecological crises of our time. We get to enter into the shared life of God and creation, and from this three-fold perspective break out of our dead-end, binary thinking into true metanoia, a renewed frame of mind and living.
It’s a work in progress. It reminds me of Jesus & Paul’s own probable spiritual practice of meditation on Ezekiel’s Chariot…see the connection?
Further recommended reading:
- Dancing with God: The Trinity from a Womanist Perspective by Karen Baker-Fletcher
- After Our Likeness: Church as Image of the Trinity by Miroslav Volf
- God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life by Catherine LaCugna
- Holy Trinity, Perfect Community by Leonardo Boff
- The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three: Discovering the Radical Truth at the Heart of Christianity by Cynthia Bourgeault
- The Named God and the Question of Being: A Trinitarian Theo-Ontology by Stan Grenz
- Trinity and Kingdom by Jurgen Moltman
- It’s a Dance by Patrick Oden
- Being as Communion by John Zizioulas
- The 1-2-3 of God – Ken Wilber (my wild card pick)
- Last but not least, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation by Richard Rohr with Mike Morrell (that’s me!) – also get your exclusive bonus chapter for free here.
Great job, Mike! Excellent prose! 🙂
And poetry. Sorry, I got my terms mixed up. I like to try my hand at a few verses from time to time as well, though I’ve never been that great at it. I enjoyed this, thanks for sharing!
Being a poety lover, I really love this! Micah and I have been writing some verse and putting it to music (guitar and djembe) for our other spiritual community. Yours (or parts?) might be perfect for that too. It’s sweet. Love it! You should definitely share it!
I love how you brought the ancient circle dance into the poem, thus reflecting the movement of life in our celebratory, daily dance with the triune God. I imagine the three of them taking part with us, for isn’t that the purpose of life, and living… for the created to be one with the creator with every breath, giving and receiving and sharing with all on this planet?
Suggestions, if they meet with your approval, just thought they might help the flow:
1. End of first stanza, /Into You we gaze / With single sight
2. End of second stanza, /In Trinity / we are born
amen and great truth in lyrical form. as i learn to listen to the music He gives me, i want more and more to move people to warfare with music, organic, acoustic mainly, but listening to lincoln brewster and some of the vineyard stuff gives me shivers too. just seems like ‘worship’ music should be about the unity, the ‘band’ and not the members with their instruments..dunno. working it out.. the Elohim is a beautiful mystery.
Lovely, Mike! Thanks for sharing….
Good use of strong stress rhythm. (I have a personal antipathy to center-justified layout of verse, though.)
The universe is a dance of oneness in which we are being asked to rejoin. ACOL = A Course on Love
About a week ago i had a vision in which Jeshua appeared, took my hand, and we started dancing. Wildly dancing. Then i invited friends and others whom i have hurt or been hurt by, to join the dance. The imaages brought laughter and smiles to my body and heart. I trully felt the presence of love.
Powerful.. I’d say DON’T polish it!
…stunning beautiful…