God’s Good Creation

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Hey friends — welcome back to the podcast about Traces of the Trinity. Over this whole journey with Peter Leithart, we’ve explored how the pattern of mutual indwelling — this Trinitarian swirl — shows up in bodies, time, language, music, family, ethics, love.

Today, in Chapter 8, Leithart asks: what kind of mind does it take to see this pattern? What kind of imagination can follow the curves of a world that doesn’t stay inside straight lines?

This is The Supple Imagination.

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So much modern thinking tries to chop reality into sharp angles — neat boxes, clear walls, rigid boundaries. Plato did it with forms and shadows. Descartes did it with mind vs. body.

We do it too — making categories that lock things in place: true vs. false, right vs. wrong, inside vs. outside. And yes — some lines are needed. Without difference, there’s just a blob.

But Leithart says: the real world won’t fit cleanly into our grids. Try it — rain or not? Mist sits in between. Blue or green? Some colors hover on the edge.

Inside and outside? They define each other. There’s no “inside” without an “outside.” There’s no father without a son, no word without another word to shape it.

Reality is full of edges — but they bend, swirl, fold.

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To see this, Leithart says we need a supple imagination — an inner flexibility. The courage to hold opposites together without collapsing them into mush.

Think of words: “woman” contains “man.” “Up” implies “down.” “White” means “not-black.” Even absence leaves a trace in presence.

The same goes for arguments. Too often, we treat debates like trench warfare: my fortress vs. yours, lobbing grenades until someone wins.

But if reality itself is curved, maybe arguments should be too. Not blunt force, but jujitsu — using your opponent’s claim to flip the conversation, to find the deeper pattern beneath the clash.

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Leithart shows how this works. Free will vs. God’s sovereignty? Some say they clash — that if God knows everything, we can’t be free.

But what if it’s because God knows all things that we are free — not in spite of it? Maybe divine foreknowledge and human freedom dwell inside each other.

It’s a puzzle — but it’s supple. It invites wonder instead of a stalemate.

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Same with politics. We debate “state” vs. “economy.” But every contract sits inside a legal system. Every law shapes markets. There is no pure “economy” walled off from politics.

A supple mind sees the overlap, the folded edges. It flips the debate from “should the state interfere?” to “how are they already indwelling each other?”

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It’s the same in faith. Leithart shows that the supple imagination doesn’t flatten truth. It honors real differences — but sees how they weave together.

Arguments don’t need to be hammers. They can be keys — unlocking hidden connections.

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So here’s the big point: the real world is not a grid of blocks. It’s more like music — flowing lines, chords that interpenetrate. More like language — word inside word inside world.

A supple imagination moves with the folds. It sees the lines, but it also sees the Möbius strip — the swirl that links inside and outside.

To think like this is to think with the grain of the world. To see the Trinitarian pattern not just in church doctrine — but in every street, every conversation, every argument, every chord.

That’s the kind of mind Leithart invites us to grow: supple, patient, alert. Able to bend with reality instead of snapping it to fit our boxes.

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So, friends — next time you’re tempted to grab the hammer and pound your point home — pause. Take a deep breath.  Look for the curve. The overlap. The trace of the other side hiding in what seems opposite.

That’s the supple imagination — and maybe, just maybe, it’s one more echo of the Triune dance.

Next time, we’ll wrap this whole journey up and glimpse the peak — what happens when the pattern leads us all the way to the Source.

Until then — keep your mind supple, your eyes open, and your heart tuned for the whispers of the Word in the world.

The Trinity leaves fingerprints on every inch of creation.

***

Next – I in Thee, Thou in Me – Episode 9 (coming soon)

I welcome any questions or comments. [Don’t worry, your personal info will not be given to anyone.] Thanks!

***

Hey friends — welcome back to the podcast about Traces of the Trinity. So far, we’ve explored how the world’s very fabric hints at a pattern of mutual indwelling — from our bodies and relationships to language, time, and music.

The following paragraph in Chapter 7 of Leithart’s book summarizes where we’ve been.

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“Everywhere, at every terrace along the way, we’ve found that the landscape has familiar features: Things are irreducibly different. Things cannot exist at all unless they are distinct from other things. At the same time, these irreducibly different things mysteriously inhabit one another, pass into and out of one another, penetrate even as they are penetrated, envelop the very same things that envelop them. And we have found that, while things cannot be at all without being irreducibly distinct, they also cannot be at all without this mutual penetration. I can’t exist unless the world I inhabit comes to dwell within me. I cannot have relationships with another person, most especially those whom I love, unless we pass into one another. Time exists only because past and present and future ineffably and simultaneously take up residence in each other. Words don’t mean unless they occupy other words and are open enough to be occupied. Each note of music is different, but each note is what it is because other sounds resound through the sound it makes.”
Traces of the Trinity – ch 7

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Now today, in Chapter 7: Making Room, Peter Leithart poses the question: if this is how the world is — then how should we live?

This chapter shifts us from how things are to how we ought to act.  From the indicative to the imperative.

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Ethics. It’s a big word. We often think rules will save us: Do this, don’t do that. Others say it’s about your heart — good motives, good life. Still others say, “Just pay attention to the situation.”

Leithart says: it’s not either/or — it’s all of it. Right rules, right motives, real situations — they must dwell in each other, just like the world’s shape.

Rules alone? They break. Situations alone? Chaos. Motives alone? They can justify just about anything.

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He gives an example: “Love your neighbor as yourself” — but who’s your neighbor? “Don’t covet your neighbor’s wife or his house or his cattle,” Yahweh thundered from Sinai, but, Leithart says: “you need to see a marriage certificate and a bill of sale to know what woman, house, and cattle are off-limits. You can’t even use a rule unless you know something about the situation, since rules always have to be applied to a real world that is always in the form of a particular situation.”

Rules demand real-world context.

Situations demand principles to steer them. And motives shape how we follow rules in situations. If they don’t swirl together, we miss the point.

Mutual indwelling — in ethics too. The pattern holds.

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But ethics isn’t just about rules and motives — it’s about love. And here’s where Leithart’s theme shines: to love is to make room. To open yourself for others, to be changed by them, to let them dwell in you — even when it’s inconvenient.

We know this in our bones. Marriage is making room. Parenting is making room — radically so. That new baby doesn’t ask permission to occupy your nights, your house, your sleep. They dwell in you — literally at first, if you’re a mother, then in your heart, your mind, your calendar.

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But making room isn’t easy. Selfishness locks the door. The father who hides in his work. The mother who closes her heart. The spouse who builds walls. The child who rebels because there’s no space left for them to belong.

Leithart says: when we refuse to make room, we cut against the grain of reality. The grain of reality is love — mutual indwelling.

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He gives everyday images: your coworker interrupts your plan. That stubborn violinist in the orchestra resists the conductor. A boss burdens your free time. Our instinct? Push back. Defend our fortress.

But Gabriel Marcel says true love is availability. To be available is to see these interruptions as opportunities for mutual dwelling. A chance to open space — and to enter someone else’s space too.

This applies to the stranger on the street, the neighbor who annoys you, the addict who shows up in your church. True hospitality isn’t approval of everything — it’s welcome that invites change. We open our lives so the other can be clothed, fed, healed, discipled.

We make room to transform.

Think of the good Samaritan. He didn’t step over the broken man. He made room in his plans, his wallet, his donkey saddle. He made the injured man’s wounds his own burden.

That’s love. Love makes room.

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Families that flourish do this well. They make room for each other’s quirks, needs, mistakes. They open the door wider when new kids come, when elderly parents move in, when neighbors knock.

Neighborhoods, cities, nations — the pattern is the same. Leithart says: the world must open. When communities barricade, they become fortresses — tribal camps at odds with each other.

Mutual indwelling becomes mutual hostility when we refuse to make room.

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But real love doesn’t mean we accept everything as-is. We don’t welcome the hungry so they stay hungry. We don’t open our doors to the broken so they remain broken. True hospitality hopes for change — for renewal. We make room for the sake of redemption. And to echo the words of Jesus: this requires discipleship training into the loving ways of our Creator.

The pattern we’ve been studying holds: just as music weaves distinct notes into one chord, just as language stitches words into worlds — so love weaves lives together.

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So, friends — where are you closed off? Who’s knocking at the door of your time, your heart, your home?

Where could you risk making room?

Because when we do — when we open ourselves to dwell and be dwelled in — we align our lives with the deepest shape of the world: the shape of Triune love.

Next time, we’ll wrap this up by looking at the final turn in Leithart’s climb — what kind of mind we need to see the world this way.

Until then — may you have the courage to open the door, and the grace to welcome what — and who — waits outside.

The Trinity leaves fingerprints on every inch of creation.

***

Next – The Supple Imagination – Episode 8

Traces of the Trinity: The Supple Imagination

I welcome any questions or comments. [Don’t worry, your personal info will not be given to anyone.] Thanks!

Hey friends — welcome back to the podcast. Today, we are hearing about Traces of the Trinity. So far, we’ve talked about our bodies, our families, our language, our sense of time — all these everyday things pointing us back to a deeper pattern of mutual indwelling.

Today, we tune our ears to something that may just be the clearest everyday clue that the universe hums with Trinitarian echoes: music.

This is Chapter 6 of Leithart’s book: Chords.

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Leithart kicks this off with a few playful experiments. If you’re listening at home, try them sometime. First — look at someone nearby and shout! Not a gentle “Hey there” — a full-throated shout!!

They’ll jump. They’ll look confused. They’ll probably be annoyed. Why? Because sound moves — it crosses space. It connects what’s here with what’s there.

Sound, like smell, is presence in absence. You don’t need a clear line of sight — sound travels through walls, under doors, across fields.

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Try another experiment: play some music in your room — your phone, a piano, a speaker. Then walk around. Face away from it. Lie down on the floor. Stand on a chair. Step into the next room.

You’ll notice something strange: the music is everywhere. The same notes fill the air above you, beside you, behind you. Unlike your eyes — which can only see what’s right in front of them — your ears pick up vibrations from all directions. The sound wraps around you.

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Think about it. You can only see one side of your laptop at a time. You look at the front — the back disappears. You can’t see the whole thing in one glance.

But when you hear a song, you hear the whole chord at once. You don’t just catch one angle — the entire harmony pours through you.

Leithart says: sound fills space without taking up space. It occupies a room fully — yet leaves that same room open for everything else. The music and the chair and your cat and your coffee mug — they all share the same space.

And then there’s the magic of chords themselves. Hit a single note on a piano — say, middle C. That note is never alone. Hidden in that one sound are faint, ghostly overtones. Each note carries hidden passengers — other pitches that make it what it is.¹Musical overtones are frequencies that occur above the fundamental (lowest) note when a musical sound is produced. They are natural vibrations that happen simultaneously with the main pitch and help determine the sound’s tone color (timbre). For example: If you pluck a guitar string tuned to C:

1. The whole string vibrates → C (fundamental)
2. The string vibrates in two halves → higher C (1st overtone)
3. The string vibrates in thirds → G (2nd overtone)
4. In fourths → higher C, and so on

These pitches follow a predictable mathematical pattern.

Play two or three notes together — a chord — and the miracle gets richer. Each note doesn’t push the others aside. They don’t compete for space. Instead, each note fills the whole soundscape — yet all coexist, intertwined. They resonate through each other.

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Jeremy Begbie, a theologian and musician, says that when you hear multiple notes together, you’re hearing “mutual interpenetration.” That’s the fancy way of saying: no note shuts the others out. Each one makes room for the rest — and together they create something more than any single note could do alone.

It’s not just chords. A melody does this too — one note leans into the next. Think of a hymn or a favorite song. Each note is itself — but each depends on what came before, and what’s coming next.

A note that refuses to yield and make space? That’s not music — that’s noise.

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Here’s where this touches the Trinity. Sound and music model mutual indwelling — perichoresis. Each part distinct — yet each part fully inside the others. All together, yet not collapsed into a blur.

Leithart says: this is more than poetic. For centuries, thinkers like the Pythagoreans²The Pythagoreans were an ancient Greek philosophical and religious movement founded in the 6th century BC by Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570–495 BC). They believed that number and mathematical harmony are the fundamental principles of reality and that the cosmos is ordered according to rational, numerical relationships. The Pythagoreans practiced a disciplined communal way of life that combined philosophy, mathematics, ethics, and religious ritual, including beliefs in the immortality and transmigration of the soul. Their ideas profoundly influenced Plato and the later development of Western philosophy, mathematics, and cosmology., Plato³Plato (c. 428–348 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher and a student of Socrates, and one of the foundational figures of Western philosophy. He founded the Academy in Athens, the first long-lasting institution of higher learning in the West. Through philosophical dialogues such as The Republic, Symposium, and Phaedo, Plato explored ethics, politics, metaphysics, and epistemology, developing influential doctrines including the Theory of Forms, the immortality of the soul, and the vision of a just society ruled by philosopher-kings. His thought shaped virtually all subsequent Western philosophy, especially through his student Aristotle., and early Christian theologians saw music as a clue to the cosmos itself. The “harmony of the spheres” was the idea that the whole universe moves like music — ordered, relational, beautiful.

Music is order in motion. Unlike a statue or pyramid — frozen and rigid — music is alive. It’s always moving. It never stays still — yet it isn’t chaotic. It’s order made of flow.

Rowan Williams⁴Former Archbishop of Canterbury (Anglican). says that music teaches us about time too. Music forces you to wait. You can’t hear a whole symphony in an instant. You can’t jam all the notes on top of each other. You have to sit there, in time, receiving it moment by moment.

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And that’s a gift. We often think of time as an enemy — ticking away, stealing youth, ending dreams. But music reminds us that transience — notes giving way — is what makes beauty possible. If every note refused to end, there would be no song.

Music shows us how to live in time — not as a prison, but as a dance.

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Here’s another layer. Singing together makes this real in our bodies. If you’ve sung in a choir, you know: your voice doesn’t stand alone. Your sound blends into others. Your chest vibrates with the bass beside you, the soprano behind you. You dwell in their sound, and they dwell in yours.

Leithart says — this is society at its best: each person distinct, yet each one opening space for the other. Music is community made audible.

So next time you hum a tune, or feel goosebumps at a chord, or get swept away by a choir — remember: you’re feeling a living parable. A hint of the shape that holds everything together.

The world hums with chords — notes distinct yet dwelling in each other — a faint echo of the Father in the Son, the Son in the Spirit, the Spirit in the Father.

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Next time, we’ll look at what happens when this pattern of making room spills out into how we live — how we love, lead, and open our lives to others.

Until then, may your days be filled with songs that remind you: the universe is not just atoms crashing in the dark — it’s a chord, a harmony, an invitation to listen deeper.

The Trinity leaves fingerprints on every inch of creation.

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Next Episode 7 – Making Room

Traces of the Trinity: Making Room

I welcome any questions or comments. [Don’t worry, your personal info will not be given to anyone.] Thanks!