In Full Colour: Trinity and Imagination

 

If I see one more real estate or renovation show where the kitchen is completely white, I think I will puke. Oh, wait, perhaps that is too much about me. Let me start again.

Imagine that you find yourself in a newly renovated open concept kitchen with: a back splash of smooth white subway tiles, crisp white cabinetry, white quartz countertops, white molding, and a French door with white framing. How does this room make you feel? How does it make you think? What adjective would you use to describe the space? Perfect? Fresh?

I am extremely biased – please note my disclaimer – I have no problem with all white kitchens or people who like them or have them; it is just that I would not be happy if that was my full-time kitchen.

 

I am pondering this on Trinity Sunday because the readings are not the white kitchen. The scriptures for today have layered images, circular patterns, and stretched a basic description of God into something beyond crisp, lineated, and squarely defined.

The readings had my mind think of ‘Colour Runs.’ For a colour run people gather at the start line wearing white t-shirts. The group is going to run what has been dubbed, ‘the happiest 5k on the planet.’ There is no time limit, no medals, no winners, and no serious racing. During the race, participants are doused in different colours of powdered corn starch. By the end of the race, white t-shirts (and the rest of the runner too) are plastered in colour – vibrant pinks, lime greens, fluorescent yellows, brilliant blues. This craze started 10 years ago and is now the largest running series in the world; running in 50+ countries and experienced by over 8 million runners.

On their website it says, “Our mission at The Colour Run is to bring people together and make the world a happier, healthier place.”

Imagine the participants at the end of the run, covered in vibrant colours, laughing, joy-filled, dirty, playful. The chaos of it … this is how I picture God as Trinity. This is how I imagine grace. This is how I imagine kindom.   … in full colour, exuberant, playful, unexpected, filled with joy and a little chaos too.

I suppose too -God-  is like stepping out your door after an early spring rain: when greens are lush, flowers are bright, bird song is bursting, the air smells sweet, and creation is full of texture and delights. This is Trinity, kindom.

 

My understanding of God is coloured by my imagination. I start with a whiteboard and draw, write, erase, add; grow ideas and thoughts and feelings. Others can add to the board too – in whatever colour they choose. Dream dreams. Vision. Innovate. Create. God, described as like imagination, is expansive, robust, never-ending, curious, playful, joyful, filled with surprises.

Robert Fulghum, American author and Unitarian minister wrote:

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.”

Is this not a modern way to express what the Apostle Paul writes in Romans?

I believe – since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that we boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. ----Rom. 5: 1-5

 

Imaging grace, as pouring over and plastering a plainly dressed me, in every colour of the rainbow; standing in that grace --- changes me.

In some ways, community is like coloured cornstarch at a Colour Run. In community I change colour: when I hear peoples’ stories of suffering and endurance, when I notice peoples’ characters growing, when I see and hear expressions of hope, when I witness the sharing of one’s heart, when love is given. I am changed!

All the connections and relationships painted in community are people accessing the grace in which they stand and spreading it into the world.  Trinity inundates the world and imagination grows exponentially.  

 

English author, Neil Gailman, wrote:

“We all have an obligation to daydream. We have an obligation to imagine. It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that society is huge and the individual is less than nothing. But the truth is individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different.”

I confess that at times I get lost in a spiral of despair, that the world is falling apart, and question ‘what is the point of all this anyway?’ Until I am reminded to look around – stand in grace- imagine that things can be different.

And where is it that I am reminded of this?

 

In community, in scripture story, in creation.

 

It is no small task to endure and persevere. It is no small task to hope. It is no small task to love.

Our mission is much the same as that of The Colour Run: our mission is to bring people together and make the world a happier, more hopeful, and love-filled place.

And we do this by standing in grace – and using imagination image something different; Trinity different, kindom different.

Perhaps, God is not dead or non-existent as some assume, perhaps it is a lack of imagination and not taking the time to daydream.  Maybe we are guilty of putting God in a box – shackling the work of Trinity- by failing to dream dreams, see visions, and prophesy images of a coming kindom; a kindom that can come now, imagined into being.  We have been wearing plain t-shirts and trying to keep them clean, instead of being bold, getting messy, playing, participating in creating community, and imagining a world filled with endurance, hope, and love.

 

On this Trinity Sunday, let us stand in grace, being filled and spattered with colour. May our imaginations and daydreams run wild, getting to work, imagining a world filled with the Trinity of endurance, hope, and love.

Once imagined, we are changed; God- Trinity is let out of the box to colour the world so that all can stand in grace. And the world is reimagined, change, covered with endurance, hope, love.