How can three persons be one, or one three? This question taxes most minds as people try to understand the Holy Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A common answer likens it to Water, Ice and Vapour. One substance, but with three distinctive characteristics each dependent on temperature.
But to the philosophical mind, whichever way we try to figure it out, the solution always seems to demand that we go further than words and what they mean. By this, we mean words as organised according to the functional design of the left side of the brain. This is commonly called the logical side and always arranges data into rational, logical sequences prior to analysing and finding answers. This half of the brain than dictates the result as being the one definitive answer.
However, The notion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as being one entity, also requires inputs from our right-brain. This half is better at making sense of semi-sorted concepts, emotional inputs, and half-resolved questions. It is the crucial half when we are establishing values, priorities, and time scales. It thinks wider, deeper and for longer than the left brain, and neuro-scientists say it is critical in moderating the didactic logical excesses of a left hemisphere which simply cannot see itself as being wrong.
I think that to fully understand the Trinity, My mind must use all its brain to first think, then speak and then do something. That something is to live my life in ways Jesus showed us is essential for our immortal future. I fail of course, but he catered for that because, like Adam, we are created as Spiritual Beings with free-will.
We can think, speak, and do things, in fact we could ourselves be said to be a triune of living consciousness, and that becoming immortal once again is a result of decisions we make. In addition to what he said, read what his near contempories say in Acts 30-31 and Matthew 19:16f .
Talking of saving however, reminds me that some gardeners save their own seed which may last for generations before being renewed. Currently I am growing white runner beans from seed given to me some years ago. I also have a thriving rhubarb plant that was split in 1860 when my Great Grandfather was born and his parents moved from Louth to find work on the Lincolnshire – Nottinghamshire border.
Like others, my natural inclination is to grow vegetables rather than flowers. Although I enjoy the colour and fragrance of flowers, I find the sight of fresh veg in the fridge or freezer more satisfying than flowers on a window ledge. But, as when I wrote earlier about the two sides of the brain, we need both to become fulfilled human beings.
Incidentally, neuro-surgeons also tell us that some people live fulfilled lives with hardly any brain matter at all. Moreover, others have concluded that the mind uses the brain according to its will, and that when the brain dies the mind does not but continues its immortal life along the trajectory set and the decisions made, during our material life.
Talking to Readers about the serious matter of our choosing immortality caused my mind to entertain a mischievous thought from a Zen Buddhist perspective. At Stanstead Airport on return from the Yemen In 1960 I loaned a ten-shilling note to John Fiztpatrick and I have never seen or heard from him since.
Impious Zen would say. “ If you lent someone ten shillings and never saw him again; then it was money well spent.”
Likewise, whenever I hear the words ‘serious matter.’ Whatever happens, somebody will find a way to take the issue too seriously.
Which thought then reminds me to put into practice the injunction,
“never miss a good chance to shut up.”
View from the Pew 