This morning, on the way to school, my daughter asked, “Papa, what is the Trinity?”
We were running late, and I said the only thing a parent can say when facing two mysteries at once — time and theology:
“I’ll explain it later,” I told her. “Actually, nobody really understands it anyway.”
She looked at me, unimpressed.
“Well,” she said, “it sounds even more complicated than Hinduism.”
In the evening, while preparing dinner, I kept my promise. I told her to imagine standing in the sunlight.
You see the sun in the sky, that’s the source.
You see its light shining on the world, that’s its presence.
And you feel its warmth on your skin, that’s its power reaching you.
Three things, but all straight outta the same spot.
That, I said, is how the first Christians tried to describe God:
as one being, experienced in three ways:
the Father as the source,
the Son as the presence among us,
and the Spirit as the breath of life that moves through everything.
It’s not a mathematical problem or an abstract puzzle meant to give you a headache.
It’s a poetic way of saying that the divine is not frozen; it moves, connects, and reveals itself in different forms, yet remains one.
When I finished, she thought for a moment, then nodded.
“So it’s like the sun,” she said.
And I said, “Yes. And maybe faith is just learning to stand in its light and warmth.”