One afternoon, a pastor was leading a Bible study at the church with a group of seminarians, young men with gray eyes, profound thoughts, and ambitious hearts. They were hanging on his every word, or were at least trying to, because the noise from the youth group upstairs was irritating and distracting.
The pastor was trying to explain to them one of the deeper aspects of the perichoretic mystery of the Trinity, and it wasn’t adding up for them. He was saying something about how self-giving was essential to the divine Being, and these young men loved talking about what was essential to anything. So they really wanted to get it. But the bumps, crashing, and laughter from upstairs was simultaneously annoying and distracting.
Finally, one of the young men, the leader of the seminarians, one who had the best grasp of the most big words, raised his hand, and said, “Pastor, may I go speak to the youth group? About the noise?”
The pastor nodded his head. “Certainly,” he said. But as the young man was almost out the door, he stopped him. “In fact,” he said, “why don’t you ask one of them down here, and I will speak to him. It might have more of an effect that way.”
The young man nodded, and disappeared. He was pretty annoyed because perichoresis was his favorite subject in the world, and so he did not pick one of the older kids who might have a reasonable explanation. He picked a scared, pimply-faced kid who was standing next to the wall, and said, “Pastor wants to see you.”
When the boy was ushered into the group of young men, with the pastor sitting there across the room, he was terrified. But the pastor summoned him over in a kindly enough way, and stood the boy in front of him. The pastor turned the boy around to face all the seminarians, held him by both his shoulders, and said, “Unless you eggheads become just like this kid, you will never get what I am talking about.” And with that, he slapped the boy on the back, and said, “Well, you can head on back to the fun. Wish I could come with you.”
The boy exited, with a wild story for his parents, and the pastor turned back to his class. The men were all blinking their eyes very slowly. For the time being anyway, they all were too educated to be wise.