Holy Community and the Myth of the Autonomous Human
Connection, for human beings, is as necessary as food and water. We need one another to survive. While we live and move in a dialectic between autonomy and connection, we Christians are formed in and by our loving relationships.
The Holy Trinity serves as our model for holy community, in the dynamic and expressive love relationship among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is our inheritance as Christians and, even more so, for the community of Trinity Church.
Our very name is a reminder that, above all, we are called into loving relationship — with one another (especially when we disagree), with our neighborhood (because it is the nature of love to expand in widening circles), with our partners through the Anglican Communion, and, most especially, with those we find hard to love.
Between racial injustice, police violence, inequality, a mental health crisis, and painful Covid losses, we are a wounded society emerging from the pandemic. But if this past year has taught us anything, it is that there is a direct line between love relationships and the healing of the world.
Again and again, the Trinity family has witnessed to God and one another as we focused on maintaining relationship in the practice of give and take, by reaching out and checking on one another frequently, and by practicing connection on virtual platforms, enabling us to see friendly faces and make new friends, despite the forces keeping us apart. In fact, we have expanded our community of faith, across the country and across the world, as people from all over joined the Trinity community for worship and formation.
Sure, our relationships have been altered somewhat, but I’d like to think the myth of the autonomous human being has once again been dispelled. We need one another now even more than before, as we live into a chosen future, as we continue to live into our Trinitarian identity of healing, restoration, and active love.
Happy Trinity Sunday! This email offering from Faith Formation and Education will go on hiatus until the fall. In the meantime, we are grateful for our (limited) reopening! May it be a deepening of our commitment to loving and serving in beloved community.
Kathy Bozzuti-Jones
Dr. Kathy Bozzuti-Jones is Associate Director for Faith Formation & Education at Trinity Church Wall Street. Share your thoughts or questions with Kathy, and join her Wednesdays at 6:30pm for Contemplative Practice with Poetry.
Children’s Time
Sundays at 10am | Online
Resumes June 6
Children’s Time and the Family Service Watch Party will not meet this Sunday and resume June 6.
Children and their families are invited to learn together Sunday mornings. We’ll begin with an opening assembly, including a prayer and a song, then break into small groups for a time of exploration and community.
This meeting opens early at 9:10am for the Family Service Watch Party — join us! If you are already registered for Children’s Time, we will meet on the same Zoom link. No need to register again.
Summer Sundays with Discovery
Sundays at 10am | Online
Beginning June 6
Happy Trinity Sunday! Our Evicted series has ended, and we will take a brief hiatus this week. We will resume our online Discovery program on June 6 with a new Summer Sundays series:
Join us this summer as we explore together the Gospel of Mark! For three special Sundays (June 6, July 11, and August 8), Discovery will hear from Dr. Peter Ajer, Professor of New Testament at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, as he gives us a “Bible toolkit” for thinking about the Gospel of Mark, its Ancient Near Eastern context, and how Mark still speaks to us today. For all other Sundays in the summer, we will look at stories, parables, and verses in Mark with discussion moderated by Trinity parishioners and staff. This series is designed for all to participate at any point throughout the summer.
Spiritual Resources
- The Bible Project’s Gospel of Mark video
- Learn a little more about the famous Rublev Trinity icon, a familiar image of Trinitarian life that invites each of us to the table.
- “Some Thoughts on the Holy Trinity” from Nadia Bolz-Weber
- “The Trinity” by Kelly Latimore, commissioned by Mark Bozzuti-Jones, with a quote by Richard Rohr (The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation): “‘Circling around’ is all we can do. Our speaking of God is a search for similes, analogies, and metaphors. All theological language is an approximation, offered tentatively in holy awe. That’s the best human language can achieve. We can say, ‘It’s like — it’s similar to…,’ but we can never say, ‘It is…’ because we are in the realm of beyond, of transcendence, of mystery. And we must — absolutely must — maintain a fundamental humility before the Great Mystery. If we do not, religion always worships itself and its formulations and never God.”
- The dove is a symbol of peace and of the Holy Spirit. Make a simple origami dove. Pray for peace and breathe in the Holy Spirit while you fold.
- Illustrated Ministry children's worship bulletin
- The Sunday Paper Junior