So begins today's reading from Revelation.
and it represents for me
the promise that God is always there
waiting to be known
waiting to provide for us
a vision for life and hope.

Yesterday, I had a hour's conversation
with a student, a member of St. James,
who was interviewing me
for a paper she is writing
about the VietNam War.

It brought back memories,
memories of serving at a fire base
near Ap Phu Loi in 1966 and 67,

memories of the nightly pounding we gave
the Phu Cong Massif
across the river.

That is the area of the famed Cu Chi Tunnels,
where almost 70,000 died.

Another thing I remembered
is an old soldier's memoirs
about experience and spirit.

Experience and spirit:
that is a theme of this day,
Trinity Sunday.

He was a North VietNamese Soldier.
His name was Bao Ninh.

One night, two years ago
John and I were walking the streets
of old town Hanoi,
and I was looking for this old soldier's book.
It has never been available
in this country.

No book shop had it, even there;
but I finally found it
in the bag of a street peddler.

The book is called
"The Sorrow of War".

I need to read you the opening page.
as a case study about experience,
and perceptions of spirit.

The mountains and jungles are water-soaked and dull. Wet trees; quiet jungles. All day and all night the water streams. A sea of greenish vapor slides over the jungle's carpet of rotting leaves. That is now.

But then was the dry season when the sun burned harshly, the wind blew fiercely, and the enemy sent napalm spraying through the jungle and a sea of fire enveloped them, spreading like the fires of hell. Troops in the fragmented companies tried to regroup, only to be blown out of the ground again as they went mad, became disoriented and threw themselves into nets of bullets, dying in the flaming inferno.

After that battle no one mentioned Battalion 27 any more, though numerous souls of ghosts and devils were born in that deadly defeat. They were still loose, wandering in every corner and bush in the jungle, drifting along the stream, refusing to depart for the Other World. From then on it was called the Jungle of Screaming Souls.

Here, when it is dark, trees and plants moan in awful harmony. When the ghostly music begins it unhinges the soul and the entire wood looks the same no matter where you are standing. Not a place for the timid. Living here one could go mad or be frightened to death.

Which was why in the rainy season of 1974, when the regiment was sent back to this area, we established an altar and prayed before it in secret, honoring and recalling the wandering spirits from Battalion 27 still in the Jungle of Screaming Souls.

I was sobered to discover in the book
that this happened
on the Phu Cong Massif in 1967.

People throughout the ages
have had life-changing experiences.

How we deal with those experiences
depends on our faith system.

VietNamese are at the core
are primarily Animists,
who worship the spirits of trees,
rivers, and jungles.
and they are ancestor worshippers
who believe the dead
hand around as shades
with no resolution
to the traumas of life.

The horror of the Jungle of Screaming Souls
would then be the natural outcome
under such a belief system,

and the result to Bao Ninh
was the eternal horror
that pours out onto his pages
and disturbed his dreams.

Bao Ninh wrote a very disturbing book
but other than that
never was able to function after the war.
There was no door open to hom.
I think he has died now
of alcoholism, lack of resolution
and just plain despair.

Many versions of religious belief
in our own country
most called christian

in my perception
are no more helpful
in processing experiences in healthful ways
than is Animism.

It matters very much what one believes.

We as followers of Christ
and members of this faith community
have a very specific way
of processing our experiences.

Some are good experiences
and some, like Bao Ninh's
are bad.

Some of the good ones,
we come to realize,
are windows on God.

Some of the bad experiences,
according to Theologian, Matthew Fox,
we come to realize
are windows on the alternative to God,
and therefore also useful
as we grow in spirit
and seek knowledge of him.

We are steeped with knowledge about
and love of the man Jesus.

We know enough
about how he felt, what he thought,
what he said, how he treated people,
and how he was connected to his God;
that we too can experience that connectivity
that love, that goodness,
and we too,
can become intimately connected to God.

And that experience drives us
to a spiritual understanding of who we are
and who God is,
and how we might find vision for life.

That man, Jesus, lived a long time ago
and in another culture.
Yet we can see evidence even today
of his power to transform
to connect
to make meaningful.
And we can see this power
most anywhere
most any time.

This limitless ability of God
to be available to us in many ways
brings us connectedness, goodness, joy
new attitudes and perceptions,
challenges, hope, and a call to ministry.

We call this present power, "the Holy Spirit"
- the Holy Breath of God.

We believe that God is he who breathes
into his community
and gives his people a vision for life
even when we would become
lost in the jungle
as a battalion of screaming souls.

So, as Bao Ninh, from his negative experience
perceived a spirituality of the underworld
and of despair and hoplessness,

so can one, through experience;
processed through faith story, sacrament,
and one another
perceive the spiritual reality of God,

Since there are many ways of perceiving God
and finding evidence of spiritual realities
so there are, inevitability, several ways
of describing that God.

I myself work
as parent, husband, friend, college,
priest, and so forth.
and, in order to be one whole, faithful,
integrated human being,
I have to learn to be consistent
through my many roles
and in my many relationships.

So God is many in relating
and one in being.

We, in the church, call that experience
the Holy Trinity,

And, so in that heavenly dialogue of the persons of God
do we have a paradigm and a vision
of how to be whole individually
by being consistent together in God.

This is Trinity Sunday,
and I have just described the doctrine of the Trinity
to you without using any of the words
of its formulation.

This is the only Sunday which addresses
a doctrine of the church
and not a story or saying of Jesus.

Trinity is not a biblical term,
but rather came out of the experience
of real people in the early church
as they struggled for a vision of God,
and they came up with something
hard to understand
but easy to experience.

It was formulated by the Byzantine church
out of Constantinople
and reflects the Greek passion
for philosophical discourse.

One clergyperson I know only as Jerry
wrote that he once took a course
on the doctrine of the Trinity
only to find, in his own words,
that it was,
"an obtuse, incomprehensible unit
filled with ancient Greek philosophical concepts
such as person, and substance.

These words sound like English,
but they have little relationship
to contemporary uses of the words.

"The Course," continued Jerry,
"made no attempt to help us explain God
to living, walking, gum-chewing,
beer swilling, mortgage-paying human beings
such as himself."
"I did discover one word related to the Trinity,
which made it all worth while,"
he concluded,

"That word is Peri-choree-sis
It translates as "Dancing around"

Peri, as in seeing through a periscope,
and Choresis, as in dancing: Choreography.
We are those who dance with God,
begin to see out of the depths,
and become whole.

In this intimacy of dancing
around with God
as we engage the world
everything is given a new face.

We can grow and relate in heathful ways
no matter what the world deals us
because God always stands ready
to give us a glimpse of heaven,

We can discover a vision
by which all our relating,
in whatever role,
can be consistent and God-like

and we can emerge from the jungle
- whole, connected,
full of spirit and grace.

"After this, I looked,
and there in heaven,
a door stood open!"