God and the Bean

I was just reading a book on the Trinity by Richard Rohr in which he suggests that one reason why children and dogs are so adorable is because of their ability to be completely open, naturally, and gaze upon others with unimpeded love. This reminded me of this photo of my dog that my wife took and sent me the other day. Her name is Bean (the dog, not my wife).

In the Trinitarian worldview Rohr presents, when my wife snapped this photo she wasn’t just taking a picture of an affectionate pet. In this moment she was experiencing and photographing God, as evidenced by the unimpeded outpouring of divine love so clear in her eyes just then. Because love is the very substance of divinity. And just as Bean manifested the perfect love of the Father for the Son, so did she embody the utter adoration of the Son for the Father, simultaneously transforming my wife into God as well, through the continuous divine flow existing between the two and facilitated by the Holy Spirit, who also extends His welcome to us all to join in and take part in their dance, the entirety of which comprises the unimaginable burgeoning and unfolding that is the Triune God, no mere combination of the three, but their all-encompassing, eternal dance of love.

If this invitation to the divine dance is regularly accepted and cultivated by us creatures, then it is no longer just loving dogs and such that begin to manifest God to us, but all parts of creation, even including the ugly and broken things that might normally cause us to look away. Because as you read this, you and I, my wife and the Bean, and every other thing you can image are nothing more and nothing less than a perfect mirroring and necessary component of the sacred interplay of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. That’s the idea anyway, and looking at this picture I can just about believe it. She’s a good dog.