Like most jazz, Dixieland starts with some basic structure – a key, tempo, chord progression, melody. The first time through you’ll hear that. One instrument will take the melody – usually the trumpet -- with the drum and tuba setting the beat. The chord progression is typically in the banjo or piano.

After the tune has been offered, then each musician takes a turn with it. Each player internalizes the melody and structure of the song and then creates an improvisation that is at once obedient to the basic structure of the tune, and at the same time utterly unique and individual. When a jazz player is improvising well, the new tune is full of life and surprise. The clarinet bends notes and flies through bright arpeggios. The trombone slides and glides to new places. The bass hops and skips into unexpected realms. Each player offers a version of the song filtered through that particular musician's gifts. Then, the last time through, they bring it all together, each player contributing a different and unique melody that flows and plays with all of the others in a back and forth self-expression of giving and receiving that seems to well up from below with an energy and life that is thrilling.

The thrill is an important part of it. You can see their delight as each musician listens to the creative solos of the others. When a group gets hot, their feeling for each other is contagious for the audience. They listen and respond back and forth in a way that is organic and synergistic, and just downright fun. Sometimes the music takes over in such a way that it seems to be playing itself. When it all comes together, the room rocks with an energy that explodes into a joyful expression of audience appreciation at the end. If you watch the musicians, they’re often smiling too, nodding their heads toward one another with particular appreciation for what’s been given and received. I’ve heard some jazz players say that when it really gets right, they don’t even think about what they are playing. It just seems to come out of them from somewhere else and play itself.

Jazz is like that. Jazz is like the Holy Trinity. In fact, most of whatever is alive and creative in all the universe is like the Holy Trinity, because all of reality is created by God and bears the divine fingerprint at some level of its being.

God is Being-Itself. God is what God is. God being what God is we call the Father.

God knows what God is. God’s full self-awareness and response in obedience to God’s divine nature is what we call the Son.

And, God knows the worth of what God is. God’s bliss -- God's thrill -- knowing the infinite worth of what God is, not self-esteem, but simple acceptance of the value of being what God is, we call the Spirit.

Yet, all of this dynamic experience of existence is one act of being, one simple act of creation.

Like jazz. There is the song poured out in music. With receptive awareness the song is received and offered back in a new interpretation that is in creatively obedient to its basic form. And there is the bliss of being within and valuing the whole spirit of the living music. Yet it is one song. I think jazz is a pretty good metaphor for the mystery of the Trinity.

You can think of the Trinity through another image -- the metaphor of love. God is the ground and source of love. The self-emptying act of creative love we call the Father. Whenever and wherever God’s love is recognized and received it is the concretizing of divine love in creation, the loving response of obedient, reciprocal love we call the Son. And the awareness of that flow of love between one and the other which sees and values its infinite worth and bliss we call the Spirit. Yet all is one complete love.

All of this is a clue to our own being and our participation in love. Anyone who has ever lived within a spirit of love – parent and child; lover and beloved – can sense this Trinitarian dance of life within yourself. There is a love that you have and give to another, and a love that the other receives and returns to you. But more than that, where love truly lives there is something that exists between you, a reality, a Spirit of love that sees your relationship and values it profoundly with humility and joy. Love given, received, and valued. Yet it is all one love.

Whenever we give ourselves profoundly, we are living within the creative life of the Holy Trinity. Think of anyone you know who is vitally alive, energetic and focused with purpose and spirit. I’m thinking of a sculptor I know, and a businessman who loves to make new projects come together. There’s a guy who makes incredible sandwiches; he pours himself into his work. I know of a monk who operates a fruitcake production facility with incredible attention to the details that create quality. I’m remembering a particular nurse who is completely and compassionately present to her patients, and a lawyer who reveres the law and its just application. I know a woman who loves to help plants grow, and a parent who is remarkably alert and patient with her children. There is a Trinitarian Spirit in these people. And if you’ll stretch with me just a little farther, I see this same living Spirit in the perfect harmony between quarterback, football and receiver in a beautiful touchdown pass. If that’s too far for you to go, go back to the jazz player, or maybe a violinist is more your taste.

There is a pattern to these relationships and activities. The pattern includes being true to one’s deep nature and purpose, being absorbed in pouring oneself out in self-offering, and the bliss of merging with the identity and worth of the other. There is always a pattern of dying and rising, letting go for the sake of the fuller life. When you ask the sculptor what it means he points to his work of art and says, "Well, see. Look! It’s what I do." When you ask the businessman I'm thinking about why he does it, it’s not really about the money. "I just love to see things come together for people," he says. The guy in the sandwich place says he likes to make people happy; they’re happy when they eat his sandwiches. And a perfect touchdown pass? Well. It’s just beautiful. It is! Like good jazz.

You think you don't understand the mystery of the Trinity. Nah. Neither do I. But every time we are truly alive -- being with awareness and appreciation -- we are living the life of the Trinity. We are hearing the music of the divine, offering our bit of interpretation on that music, and living in the Spirit of life itself.

And all that jazz.