Human beings like to understand things. We’re not so keen on mysteries. If we understand it gives us some control – or so it seems. We name and categorise things. Hence all the “….ologies”, including theology, which, like all the others, constructs explanations, theories and arguments.
I smiled on Sunday when Peter, at the start of his sermon, explained that clergy teams all look at one another to see who will tackle the sermon on Trinity Sunday. Yes, what a concept to explain and explore. One God in three persons. However, for me his analogy of us as humans playing multiple roles, but still being ourselves, was really helpful. It also set me thinking.
I found myself recalling the bits I have picked up about the physics of the universe. Particularly the fundamental understanding that the universe is a series of reactions and interactions. Not static, but dynamic. A place of movement. As physicist Carlo Ravelli puts it, it is “A world of happenings and not things.” If you measure an atomic particle as a particle, then it’s a particle. If you measure it as a wave, it is a wave.
Is it possible that the creator of the universe too is a God of movement? Steadfast, but not static, as our literal minds might have him – or her? We love logic, clarity and simplicity, explanations we can understand. Things that can shift and move and change can make us feel uneasy. Yet that would seem to be the nature of God, the three in one.
Oh, and particles can be in two places at once.
Chris Dawson