One of my favourite “ways into” talking about the Trinity is the idea of Father, Son and Holy Spirit as God beyond, beside and within us. While this doesn’t grasp the whole truth, I find it a handy way of opening up what can seem a very abstract idea by using the language of relationship.

I was very glad to find that our regular poet Malcolm Guite uses the same idea in this sonnet for Trinity Sunday.

In the Beginning, not in time or space,
But in the quick before both space and time, In Life, in Love, in co-inherent Grace,
In three in one and one in three, in rhyme.

In music, in the whole creation story,
In His own image, His imagination,
The Triune Poet makes us for His glory, And makes us each the other’s inspiration.

He calls us out of darkness, chaos, chance, To improvise a music of our own,
To sing the chord that calls us to the dance.

Three notes resounding from a single tone, To sing the End in whom we all begin,
Our God beyond, beside us and within.

Fr Matthew