On the Eve of Trinity Sunday: A Poetic Tribute to God

Note: Since the 10th century, in western Christendom, the Sunday following the Day of Pentecost (the 50th day after Easter Day) is Trinity Sunday; this year, June 16, 2019. The word, “Trinity,” not found in the Bible, was first used in the 3rd century by the African Carthaginian scholar Tertullian.(1) The doctrinal outline of belief “in one God…one Lord, Jesus Christ, (and)…the Holy Spirit” was codified in the 4th century Nicene Creed.

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“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him”(2)

God is born in the human imagination
faced with the mystery,
beyond earthbound comprehension, e’en less mastery,
of an unfathomably complex creation.

So, I believe we (surely, some) humans oft think about divinity
as a mirrored-invention,
a reflective-creation of creaturely ingenuity.

Truth is
(at least, for me),
I think, aye, I believe that God alway
was,
is,
and will be.

For all ideas, as human, are spatial and temporal
(earth-space-and-time bound)
thus, not ever (never) eternally-sound.

E’en so, this idea of God,
whate’er the era of human history
or culture
or race
or clan
persists;
resists being unthought.

And, for me, this thought reoccurs;
a remembrance of a time long ago,
a moment before (some 30 years or so)
when I sat at the South Carolina shore
and through a day and into a night,
first, I watched the rising and falling of the tide,
then, closing mine eyes,
I listened to the coming and going of the waves…

And then, it occurred to me:
What if there was…is Another,
so fully Another as to be wholly Other than any other,
for Whom the sea is but a reflection
of the coming in answer to prayer and
of the going to fulfill the need stated there;
and not only for a day into a night,
but forever?

Truth is
(at least, for me),
I think, aye, I believe that God alway
was,
is,
and will be.

Footnotes:
(1) Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus; anglicized as Tertullian (160-225)
(2) “Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer” is one of many memorable aphorisms of François-Marie Arouet (nom de plume, Voltaire) (1694-1778). Though often interpreted as an ironic quip ascribing to the notion that God is fictional, this saying is part of a larger work by Voltaire, The Three Imposters, in which, arguing against an atheistic ideology espoused by three of his contemporaries, he asserted that the existence of God and the human belief in God are essential elements of a civilized and functional society.

Illustration: The Holy Trinity (1511), Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). Note: Dürer depicts the heavenly hosts of angels bearing the instruments of Jesus’ passion (his suffering, e.g., on the right, the whipping post to which he was bound and, on the left, the whips with which he was flogged and the cross on which he was crucified). The angels surround the robed and crowned God the Father bearing in his arms the crucified God the Son, his wounds in hands, feet, and side, visible, whilst God the Holy Spirit hovers overhead in the form of a dove. Underneath, the four winds blow.