Discomfort and Heat 

It’s hard to escape the divisiveness and partisanship of our society, culture, and world today.

Nowhere is this more relevant than politics. You feel passionate about your party and your

issue. But your co-worker or neighbor backs the other party or other issue with equal vim.

And the way we live so much of our lives stops right there. Someone takes Position A while

someone else takes Position B; and forever shall the two exist in rivalry and antagonism. World

without end.

This is the behavior we should expect from in a binary system – a place of “two-ness” in

constant opposition. At best – and only after we’ve stopped yelling at one another – maybe we

compromise on a “synthesis” position, birthed out of our competing dualisms.

But if the universe is created in the image of Creator and the Creator is a Trinity, it begs the

question: What if we don’t live in a binary univrersae at all? What if, instead, the universe is

ternary?

If three-ness is more at the heart of the universe than two-ness, that means we can hold our

perspectives with earnestness while also fully awaiting an uncontrived third force to arrive and

surprise us right out of our neat and tidy little boxes. I’m not talking about a synthesis of

competing ideas but a genuinely novel arrive on scene, a Position C.

What form that third force takes is beside the point. And rest assured the third force never

invalidates the first and second force. Instead, the third force redeems each position and gives

everyone a valuable role to play in the creation of something genuinely new.

Cynthia Bourgeault, a faculty member at the Center for Action and Contemplation writes on

this Law of Three. She describes how the operating principle of the Law of Three creates a new,

fourth possibility.

Take for example Jesus’ comments about a seed of wheat in John 12:24, “Unless a seed falls

into the ground and dies, it remains a single seed.” If a seed falls into the ground it enters in the

sacred process of transformation:

Seed is the first force (Position A). It meets the ground, second force (Position B). These forces

are in opposition to one another. The ground is the place the seed goes to die a moist, damp,

dark death. Unless a third force, Sunlight, is introduced. When the third force enters the

equation THEN the three generate a sprout.

Imagine how much our world would change if we stopped accepting wholesale the Law of Two

and instead embraced the mystery of the Trinity.

This Sunday is Trinity Sunday at FUMCTC. Join us in worship to praise the Three and One God of

the universe.

Grace & Peace,

Rev. Taylor