Rest a while

My immediate arrival at the seminary, where I was to begin formation for the priesthood, did not involve any talks about God.

Neither one nor three. Neither incarnate, resurrected, nor transubstantiated.

It did not involve reading the Scriptures and having them explained — what is known as exegesis (from the Greek, literally “to lead out”: drawing the meaning out of a text).

There were morning prayer, meditation and Mass, of course. But the structure of my day was determined by a viticulturist and a vintner.

The viticulturist manages the vineyard and the grapes as they grow. The vintner is responsible for making wine from those grapes. These two did not always see eye to eye.

The viticulturist wants the grapes off the vine as soon as possible, enabling the next stage of vine management to proceed. The vintner usually prefers the grape to stay on the vine as long as possible, for the greatest accumulation of natural sugar.

(Apparently UV exposure significantly increases the Brix and pH in the grape juice. If you have no idea what that means, you may well have a vocation to ministerial priesthood.)

The seminary where I studied was surrounded by grapevines, and the young men in the student body were a ready source of pickers.

Days were spent in the summer heat, moving along row upon row of vines, picking into a plastic baby bath pushed beneath each one. Hour after hour, hot and sticky — Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Chasselas and Riesling are names that come to mind.

(And if you knew where to look: Iona and Albany Surprise — shh.)

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, came the realisation: I am learning about God in this dusty, hot, sticky vineyard. This place is my classroom; these vines are my teacher.

• Here, there is barrenness awakening to fruitfulness.
• Here, there is emptiness emerging into abundance.
• Here, God is hot, dusty and sticky.

I had been looking so hard elsewhere that I was blind to what was immediately before me.

Have you noticed how we use the word “Amen” like a liturgical full stop?

Many of our prayers, both liturgical and personal, end with the words “through Christ our Lord, Amen.”

Quite frequently, there is then a physical shift — for example, in our Eucharistic celebration, the community sits at the conclusion of the Opening Prayer, and activity relocates to the ambo (the lectern, for the uninitiated).

We conclude our Prayers of the Faithful with a communal Amen, and activity relocates to the altar.

A liturgical doxology will often conclude with the words “Through Him, and with Him … Amen.”

During the Rite of Communion, people approach the minister of Bread and/or Cup and the following exchange takes place:

“Body of Christ.” — “Amen.” “Blood of Christ.” — “Amen.”

Technically, “Amen” means “So be it.” (Beyoncé has a track on her album Cowboy Carter titled “Amen”.)

Amen has become a liturgical full stop.

I was once in ministry in a parish where one elderly woman had done away with the full stop — at least during the Rite of Communion.

She was a Māori kuia — an elderly woman of standing in her community.

At the Rite of Communion, she would approach the Minister of Communion and, to the invocation “Body of Christ,” respond: “Nau mai.” (Pronounced “naw my.”)

To the invocation “Blood of Christ,” she would respond in kind: “Nau mai.”

In Māori culture, nau mai is a form of greeting and welcome — about as far from a full stop as you could possibly get.

Does the Body of Christ, which we call the Church, resemble a full stop or a welcome?

Body of Christ — Nau mai.

Anyone who has seen the film Zorba the Greek will remember this scene. It happens toward the end.

“Teach me to dance,” says Basil, broken by failure. Basil is a young, reserved English writer who has set out to Crete to claim a small inheritance.

Zorba, smiling, opens his arms to the sea. “Dance?” he replies, his eyes shining. “C’mon, my boy.”

As the zither plucks that familiar tune, Zorba snaps his fingers and begins slowly to dance. Basil joins him, and soon they are whirling and kicking sand.

By the fourth century, Eastern theologians had found a metaphor to describe how God’s energy works: perichoresis. We can loosely translate the word as “circling around” — and it is the root of our own word “choreography.”

These theologians — including Gregory of Nyssa, Basil of Caesarea, and Gregory Nazianzen — had turned to a word from Greek theatre. Perichoresis means circle dance.

Modern Greeks still use the same word for their ancient folk dance.

In perichoresis, the dancers join hands and move in a circle, stepping faster and faster as the music speeds up. Watching from the sidelines, bystanders can no longer see individual dancers — only the moving energy of the whole circle.

Searching for a metaphor to describe God’s nature and activity, the Eastern theologians looked at perichoresis and said, “That’s what the Trinity is like.”

This was the word they used to describe the foundational quality of God’s character: relationship and communion.

In the beginning is relationship. In the beginning is movement. In the beginning is dance.

As we celebrate the feast of Trinity Sunday, maybe our simple chorus to our Triune God is, as it was on the beach for Basil, “Teach me to dance!”