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As I sit with this icon of the Holy Trinity, I imagine myself as a child.  My mother and I are visiting with my grandparents at their home.  My grandparents and my mother are sitting at the kitchen table.  As I enter the kitchen, my grandparents warmly invite me to join them at the table.  I don’t know or understand what the three adults are discussing, but my grandmother has baked fresh cookies and she’s poured a glass of milk for me.  I happily sit with these adults, eating my cookies and milk.  I feel a strong sense of safety, contentedness, belonging and being love.

Then I imagine being at the table with these three adults and my favorite cousin.  My cousin and I don’t understand or pay much attention to the conversation of the three adults, but we are happy and content to be with them and with each other – and to share the cookies and milk that Grandma has prepared for us.  I feel the same sense of safe contented belonging and love being shared between all five of us.

Next, I imagine being at the table with these three adults and the little boy who lived down the road from my grandparents.  This boy (I can’t even remember his name now) and I weren’t friends and playmates, but we weren’t “enemies” either.  I don’t mind that Grandma pours a glass of milk for him and asks me to share the cookies with him.  It’s nice to have another person my age at the table, but I don’t feel the same sense of cozy, contented love being shared between the five of us as I felt with my cousin.  Afterall, he’s not a “family member”, he’s a guest.  But it’s still quite amiable, pleasant and enjoyable for all of us.

Finally, I imagine being at the table with these three adults and a girl who lived down the street from me.  Her name was Gloria.  She was 1 or 2 years older than I.  She was bossy, demanding and she spoke and acted in mean ways towards others – myself included.  My best friend, Sharon, and I rode on the school bus with Gloria, but we always tried to sit as far away from her as we could – more out of fear than dislike, although we didn’t like her much either.  As my grandparents invite Gloria to sit at the table and enjoy cookies and milk with us, I feel disgruntled and annoyed.  Why should I have to be nice and share with her when she’s always mean to me?  Don’t my grandparents realize that she’s not my friend?  Don’t they realize that she doesn’t even like me – or I her?  Do they have any idea of what she’s really like?  She is polite enough to my mother and grandparents, but she also monopolizes the conversation with talk about herself.  I find myself resenting the attention that Gloria demands and receives.  The three adults politely listen to her without displaying any sign of annoyance.  In fact, they treat her with the same kindness, generosity and grace that they treat me, my cousin and the boy down the road with.  I feel skeptical of this – surely, they’re just being nice to our guest, even if she is being a tedious bore.  But what if they’re not just being nice?  What if they think she’s ok?  What if they actually like her?  I feel a sense of panic and dismay growing within me.  I feel lost and threatened, and I feel resentful that I should be feeling these uncomfortable things in the presence of my mother and grandparents – people who I share that circle of safe, happy, contented belonging and love with.  As a child, I don’t understand what is happening to me and I feel angry and sad at the same time.  The cookies and milk don’t taste good any more, in fact, I don’t want them – Gloria can have them all!  I sit very quiet and still, pouting and stewing inside, wondering when this will end and Gloria will go home.

As an adult, I wonder how my practice of visio divina with this icon reflects who I am today.  As I come to the table of the Holy Trinity, I feel the joy and peace of being their precious beloved.  I feel this same joy and peace, this same beloved-ness, as I come to the Trinity’s table with others who are like me – people who I receive as family, friends, loved ones.  I even feel open and benevolent about including those who I don’t have any real feelings one way or the other about at the Trinity’s table with me.  But what about those people who I don’t like, don’t agree with, don’t get along with, or don’t even know – what is my real inner attitude about sitting at the Trinity’s table with them?  How willing am I to view, perceive and receive them as the Holy Trinity views, perceives and receives them?  What is the state of my heart towards them?  I fear that the state of my adult heart towards strangers is, more often than not, not all that different than the state of my heart was towards Gloria when I was a little girl.  For this, I must repent again and again and again.