As a secondary school teacher I overhear many things. More often than not, the things I accidentally hear… I try VERY hard to forget (8th and 9th graders are absolutely disgusting!). Sometimes, though, the things I hear send me into random fits of laughter. Others stop me dead on a dime in disbelief.
I will never forget the day one of my students asked if killing an infant is considered murder if nobody ever knew it was born (because “if the baby never had a name, it’s not like it was a real person”).
I will never forget the day I heard a girl ask her classmate “Is your birthday this year?”
I will NEVER forget the day I heard “I don’t condone homosexuality, but God loves everyone. If God loves him, and we are Christians, we should love him too.” That was easily one of my proudest moments last year.
This post is not about murder, birthdays or homosexuality.
This post is about something I overheard in my summer school classroom this week… and couldn’t help but chime in on.
I was busy designing a problem of systems of equations on the board; being a total math nerd… I wanted to make up my own problem, and being an artist… I wanted it to look beautiful. In the time it took me to draw a symmetric grid and two straight perfectly intersecting lines… two of my students managed to fall into a debate. I’m not entirely sure what Ciarra was trying to preach to Dan about, but I heard her say “Jesus is the SON of God.” His reply “Yes… but they are the SAME PERSON.” “No they aren’t,” she said “How can he be his SON but also be HIM.”
At this point in the conversation I started paying attention. I was interested to see what would happen next.
Nothing interesting happened next.
They kept saying the same things back and forth: “Yes they are” “Not they aren’t” “Yes they are” “No they aren’t” (Eighth graders are the best) Until I finally turned around and asked “Are you familiar with the concept of The Holy Trinity?“
She had never heard of it.
I continued.
“Many Christian denominations believe in what is called the TRINITY consisting of the FATHER the SON and the HOLY SPIRIT. Most people are baptised with those exact words. Some of these denominations go so far as to believe that the three… are three separate parts of one whole.”
She looked at me like I was crazy… “So… when Jesus went to the garden to pray… he was… talking to himself?”
“It is a very difficult concept to grasp, I know… But those who believe in it, believe it is a mystery we will fully understand in time… how three SEPARATE beings can, at the same time, be the SAME being.”
At this point I drew a 3 leafed clover and used St. Patrick’s infamous analogy… the three leaves of the shamrock being the three parts of the trinity, yet still one shamrock.
This analogy did not work.
Neither did the sides of a triangle (which is how I usually envision it myself) or even the three dimensions of a cube (Math makes everything make more sense to me… others… not so much).
I then said “I have heard it explained… There is God, and there is Jesus… the Holy Spirit is the LOVE they have… and that love is SO STRONG that it binds them together and makes them one.”
I thought for sure that would work. She still thought I was moronic… so I went back to what I’m good at… teaching systems of linear equations.
For the next 24 hours the concept of the Trinity was lingering in the back of my mind. How could I explain the idea more clearly? How can we express this wholly symbiotic relationship between the Father, His Begotten and the Breath of Life?
Guess where it finally hit me… YOGA.
At my first YOGA class this Wednesday, upside down and twisted backwards, the instructor was telling us about a specific YOGA philosophy- that WHO WE ARE is made up of THREE PARTS that form a type of triangle (she had me at triangle): Mind, Body and Soul.
I almost broke my neck.
It all suddenly made so much more sense.
The Mind– The Father, Creator, the “Brains of the operation” you might say.
The Body– The Son, the physical manifestation of the Father.
The Soul– The Holy Spirit, love eternal.
None would be whole without the others.
And we are created in his image.
The parallels are infinite.
Food for thought.
Tune in next week for more random thoughts by Amber…
Toodles!
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