“Love’s Trilogy?” said Lady. “What is this, Marc, a
Christian book!”
“It is a little surprising,” I told her, “since oil and
water are far more compatible than I and Christianity. Anyway, this is all
about Julian of Norwich—circa 1470—and her revelations, or showings, as she
called them. So I figured I would walk as far as I could down the road with
Julian, and then, when I could do no more, I’d sit by the side of the road and
wish her Godspeed. Which may be today, since we’ve got to two major hurdles—the
Trinity and the Passion of Christ—and she soared right over them. Clever woman,
though dead these many centuries. And here I am, slacking back and wondering if
I can tiptoe around them.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Well, they’re both sort of central to Christianity—at least
most people think so—but I’ve never quite bought in. Given that Julian and I
got along until the fourth revelation, and there are 86 or so, it means that
we’ve barely gotten out of the driveway. Or put it this way: we parted ways on
page 13, and the book has 333 pages.”
“What—333! That’s your favorite number! Marc, that’s a
sign!”
“Not really, 333 is the page that the last revelation
starts, so it goes on for a bit longer….”
“Still a sign!”
“Listen, can we just drop it? I tried, I really tried, but I
just can’t.”
“So what’s the problem with the Trinity?”
“The problem is that I used to know why it was important,
historically speaking, and I know that everybody got into a big to-do about it,
and there were conferences and diets and schisms and charges of heresy and
excommunications—the entire religious smorgasbord. But here’s the deal: I’ve
never seen the point in it, even when I could understand it, which I mostly
couldn’t. I mean, I think it was Karen
Armstrong who said, ‘we never really got the Trinity in the West,’ and who
also said that a person would have to meditate most of a lifetime to understand
the Trinity. Oh, and I was perfectly fine with the old song, “Three in one and
one in three, oh, the noble Trinity!”
“Not sure that ever made it down to Puerto Rico,” said Lady.
“Trust me, it was never on Dick Clark’s hit parade. So I
muddled around with the Trinity for years, until I discovered that somebody in
the 13th century had come up with a great design for it all, so much
so that they were evening wearing it on the shields. In fact, it’s called the
Shield of the Trinity, or Scutum Fidei, in Latin.”
“Yeah? What’s it look like?”
“Check it out—and the guy who designed had a serious career
waiting for him on Madison Avenue, many
centuries later….”
“Not sure I get that….”
“OK—try this….”
“Slightly better.
Explanation?”
“Well God is at the center, and goes into the three
components of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And vice versa, since
the arrows go both way. Which mean that the three elements of the Trinity are
also God. But the Holy Ghost is not the Son, or the Father. ‘Est’ being ‘is’
and ‘non est’….”
“Do let me guess that one,” said Lady, more dryly than the
Sahara Desert. “Anyway, since we’ve cracked the Trinity, why jettison poor
Julian?”
“In the fourth revelation, she waxes ecstatic about the
Trinity, and why is it that the Trinity just leaves me cold? Granted, I haven’t
put my lifetime into it—but why would a simple creature, by her own definition,
care about it? Much less go nutso over it?”
“What does she say?”
“’And in the same showing (revelation) suddenly the Trinity
almost filled my heart with joy…’”
“Almost?”
“Bingo—I picked up on that, too. Curiously, the commentator
didn’t mention it. But then Julian goes on a riff, at one point describing the
Trinity as our ‘everlasting lover.’ Did I tell you ecstatic? Anyway, why should
she care? Why should anyone care? And why were all those medieval crusaders
putting it on their shield?”
“I’m not sure I’ve met too many people so occupied with the
Trinity.”
“I’m not occupied, and that’s the problem. And don’t even
get me started about the Passion—which is the whole thing about the
crucifixion, loosely—because I don’t get that, either. Though I will say that I
can think of no other religion that is as narrative-driven as Christianity. I
mean, look at Buddhism: what happens there? Guy sits under tree. Guy receives
wisdom. Guy teaches wisdom. End of that story!”
“Right—might be hard to tease out an hour and forty minutes
of film on that.”
“It’s been done, but not without some stretching.”
“So what’s your problem with the Passion?”
“Well, Julian gets totally into it. You can almost feel and
smell the blood. And of course, I’m such a smart-ass about it all. Tell me that
Christ died for my sins, and my first reaction is, ‘how very presumptuous of
him.’ Which doesn’t go over big, theologically speaking. Anyway, until Susan
suggested that the whole point of the passion was not suffering but
vulnerability, the whole thing left me cold. So now I’m lukewarm, which doesn’t
feel quite so good, next to Julian’s blast furnace.”
“So you didn’t get anything out of the revelation?”
“Yeah, I did, but it sort of slipped by the commentator, so
it’s probably nothing. Anyway, what do you make of this: ‘For it seemed to me
that it could well be that I would—by the permission of God, and with his
Protection—be tempted by fiends before I died.’ All that, by the way, being
tossed off in a parenthesis, whereas I would stick that right up that at the
top of the revelation. In fact, I’d bang a concerto out of that drum,
and stick the Passion and the Trinity in a footnote.”
“What’s so interesting about that?”
“Seems like a more fertile field than the other two.
Interesting that Julian sees the temptation by fiends as something occurring
with God’s permission, and with his protection.”
“Free will?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But I think it’s more than that. I think
that temptation by fiends is necessary, and always has been, throughout the
Christian narrative. There’s that snake, you know….”
“I’ve met many a snake,” said Lady.
“No, the one with the apple…”
“That, too, though every snake, you can be sure, has his
apple. Haven’t you? Met the snakes, I mean.”
“Seems like I have; I think we all have.”
“And what apples have you bit into? With or without God’s
permission and protection?”
I consider this.
“I spent years crippled with self-doubt about my talent.
Think that counts?”
“Remember the light and the bushel?”
“I think I refused a lot of love that I should have
accepted. How about that?”
“Remember the fatted calf?”
“Not sure that works….”
“It absolutely works. We go off, we stray, we make mistakes,
and then, somehow, we get home again. And yes, the brother gets his nose out of
joint, but there is also the father, who hasn’t stopped loving, even when his
child was straying. The story would have worked better, by the way, if the
author had eliminated the other brother, and made the possible rejection
internal to the Prodigal Son….”
“Quite possibly….”
“There’s something I’m missing, here,” I told her. “I know
there’s a snake I’ve overlooked in the grass, though I’ve grown drunk on his
fruit. But what is it? What am I missing?”
“Maybe,” said Lady, “if you get to the end of the road with
Julian, you’ll find out.”
Could she be right?
