Sundays after Trinity
I’ve been trying to think about the Sundays after Trinity. Trinity Sunday is about, well, the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Wendy shared with us some thought-provoking comments on the meaning of the Trinity this year (and see further comments below). But what of the Sundays after Trinity? We’ve done Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost… now we’re in the long drag in the church calendar: no major festivals until Advent. I think this is a pity: the summer and early autumn are somehow the best time of year, when I can feel closest to God. I find it hard to think of God’s presence on a cold, hard, damp February pew. The heaters barely even look warm, and I’m thinking if only I’d sat in the pew in front I might be able to feel the heat. But on a warm summer day, clear blue skies, bright shafts of sunlight through the Church windows: yes, God is there.
While I was searching for thoughts on the Sundays after Trinity, I came across a poem by John Meade Falkner, author of a number of poems and books, the best known (to me) being “Moonfleet”. When I was a boy, I read the children’s novels that many of my generation read: Kidnapped, Treasure Island, Alice in Wonderland, Just William, Biggles, Peter Pan, 101 Dalmatians, The Phoenix and the Carpet, The Railway Children, (never read the Hobbit – oh the shame!)… But one that made a special impact was Moonfleet. It’s set in a mythical Dorset coastal village called Moonfleet, roughly modelled on the Fleet villages near Chickerell. The hero is the teenage John Trenchard, an orphan living with a nasty aunt and pining for the daughter of the lord of the manor. It has everything: a legend of a cursed hidden diamond, smuggling, and the enigmatic landlord of the local inn: Elzevir Block. John gets caught up in smuggling and is forced to flee Moonfleet; when will he return? I have to admit to a particular reason why Moonfleet made such an impression: much of my childhood was spent in Dorset, in and around the villages behind the Fleet (the long lake trapped behind Chesil Beach). The village names have a music quite unlike that of Suffolk names: Langton Herring, Buckland Ripers, Coldharbour, Chickerell… I knew them all. I knew Moonfleet. In fact, probably as well as did John Meade Falkner, who spent only his schooldays in Dorset.
John Meade Falkner is also known for his poetry, including this, written in 1910 when every school boy and girl learned Latin (and went to Church). It's called simply “After Trinity”.
We have done with dogma and divinity,
Easter and Whitsun past,
The long, long Sundays after Trinity
Are with us at last;
The passionless Sundays after Trinity,
Neither feast-day nor fast.Christmas comes with plenty,
Lent spreads out its pall,
But these are five and twenty,
The longest Sundays of all;
The placid Sundays after Trinity,
Wheat-harvest, fruit-harvest, Fall.Spring with its burst is over,
Summer has had its day,
The scented grasses and clover
Are cut, and dried into hay;
The singing-birds are silent,
And the swallows flown away.Post pugnam pausa fiet;
Lord, we have made our choice;
In the stillness of autumn quiet,
We have heard the still, small voice.
We have sung Oh where shall Wisdom?
Thick paper, folio, Boyce.Let it not all be sadness,
Not omnia vanitas,
Stir up a little gladness
To lighten the Tibi cras;
Send us that little summer,
That comes with Martinmas.When still the cloudlet dapples
The windless cobalt blue,
And the scent of gathered apples
Fills all the store-rooms through,
The gossamer silvers the bramble,
The lawns are gemmed with dew.An end of tombstone Latinity,
Stir up sober mirth,
Twenty-fifth after Trinity,
Kneel with the listening earth,
Behind the Advent trumpets
They are singing Emmanuel’s birth.
Perhaps it's apt that we should spend the longest part of the calendar looking forward to the Nativity.
Simon Garrett
Further thoughts on the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit?
Sometimes people think that when Christians talk about the Trinity we go off into a wholly different language. Dim recollections of the ‘Creed of St Athanasius’ in the Prayer Book, with its “there are not three incomprehensibles, but one incomprehensible.” What are we talking about? God is Love – God is Trinity
The Trinity can sound odd, indeed any concept of God that didn’t sound odd at first would be a pretty inadequate concept of God. But the world is full of reasonably helpful analogies where three or more distinguishable things merge into a united whole. We have three dimensions describing one reality of space, and for the musically inclined three ‘voices’ can make one harmonious piece of music.
With the most amazing insight, inspired by the same Holy Spirit, St. John tells us: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. They are all there, at the moment of creation, at the Big Bang if you like. They are all here now.
You can’t pin down God, in words or in any other way. Even a ‘mere’ human being is indefinable. However it is doubly difficult to use words to define or describe the Holy Spirit. After all, most people have some concept of ‘God’ and Jesus, as the Word made flesh, is relatively accessible as a human being. But the Holy Spirit? Or worse, the Holy Ghost?
It’s all a bit confusing for people: we are used to the idea of powerful abstract forces: we find it easier to have a ‘mighty wind’ at the beginning creation than ‘the Spirit of God’ .Yet experience shows that the Holy Spirit is ‘of one being’ with the Father and the Son, a Person rather than a thing. St Luke has “the Holy Spirit will teach you what you are to say” (Luke 12:12)
Jesus told his disciples:I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Advocate – the Greek word is parakletos which means one who is called to the side of someone to defend or help him- the Holy Spirit… [he] will teach you all things … he will guide you into all the truth; for … whatever he hears he will speak and he will declare to you the things that are to come (John 14:16-17, 26, 16:13).
There is no doubt that, for Jesus and the New Testament writers the Holy Spirit is in no sense less than personal, not just some abstract force.
But remember that ruach means Spirit, Wind and Breath. ruach is also the word for the desert wind, unseen and powerful. The whirlwinds, or ‘dust devils’ were seen whirling across the wilderness, catching up dust and debris. So the Spirit of God catches us into the life of God.
(Extract from http://www.starcourse.org/sc6a.html)