Who Am I…

We stood and stared, filled with awe and wonder. I stood and stared across the 
same mountain lake in the early morning, through the mist and long white clouds. I watched as the sun 
slowly and gently rose over other mountains and filled the day with light that grew brighter as the moments 
passed. I stood and stared at this wondrous beauty, filled with awe and delight. 
This was a type of experience I’ve had many, many times, but each is unique, special and no less aweinspiring and wondrous. I never cease to be filled with wondrous delight and awe before the rising or setting 
sun. As I stood watching that setting sun, the sky grew darker and gradually the stars and moon filled this 
canvas with twinkling wonder. Away from city lights, the stars were bright and beautiful. The moon, in 
one of its many phases, was glowing and its reflection splashed across the lake. As I stood, I wondered!
I pondered the moon and its changing shape through the month, its brightness growing and declining 
across the year. Some of those bright stars were planets, part of our solar system, a vast distance across. 
And yet, other stars were truly stars from within our own Milky Way Galaxy and other galaxies beyond. 
The nearest star is about 4.25 light years away and our little solar system is about 25,000 light years from 
the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy, containing somewhere between 100-200 billion stars. I can’t 
comprehend those sizes and distances. I can’t imagine what is out there – it is so very vast and big!
Standing before that lake under the deepening darkness, I was aware of the vastness of the universe, 
well a small part of the universe, which is beyond my capacity to grasp. Suddenly I felt very small, even 
insignificant. Who am I before this vast expanse of universe, the countless stars in my part of the sky, all 
representing another system of moons and planets? Who am I before the raw and wondrous beauty of the 
sun setting across this mountain lake with ancient mountain ranges standing proud and strong? Who am I 
before the trees, plants and shrubs, the animals, fish, birds and insects out there, all that inhabit this world? 
Who am I before the people who have stood on these shores over the years, lives I don’t know, complex 
and wondrous, painful and hard? Who am I, in my simple life, awareness and experience, just another 
person seeking my way in a complex world of competing interests and powers? Obviously, I continue to 
ponder these questions. As Nico I walk each morning around the local creek, through ancient trees and 
landscape. As I experience the sun filtering through the trees or mist, warming the earth and filling it with 
light. As I meet others in their joy and pain, the stories of lives lived, of hopes and dreams, of pain and 
struggle, I ponder. Who am I? Who are we? 
I live in a world where there is a diminished sense of the Divine or of transcendent encounter beyond 
the material, physical world. Most people in my culture live without any sense of God, or of need for God. 
We all pursue lives in search of more control and the ability to determine our destiny and influence the 
world around in our own favour. Power, money and status will help us rise to the top and exert some control 
over life and being. There is the strong perception that we are the masters/mistresses of our own destiny
and life is a competition to the top. Such is the fracturing of communal integrity and the sense of mutual 
and collaborative life. Never-the-less, we still yearn to belong to something, a group, a tribe, a community 
of identity. We need other people, as much as we resist and believe in our own individual integrity and 
independence – we need others!
I am, by nature of my work and general demeanour, drawn into situations where pain and struggle are 
manifest. I regularly encounter others where the façade of personal strength and control has broken open. 
I meet people in their brokenness and pain, at the point where they finally recognise that they aren’t in 
control – and perhaps never really were. I meet people in the place where life erupts in confusion, chaos 
and overwhelming despair. In this place there is the recognition that they cannot save themselves from 
life’s realities. 
This is a space I occupied many years ago, and many times since. It is a space where I realise that I am 
vulnerable and powerless before the world and its overwhelming power and force, whether the power of 
regimes and evil forces, or the power of nature, both within my own body and being, and in the world 
beyond. I recognise this space in others, and we meet in shared brokenness. Sometimes this feels like an 
emptiness as the narrative we held falls away, negated by reality and leaving us lost, alone and desperate.
In this space, we yearn for someone, something, to come and share our pain and despair. We yearn for 
Reflection Notes – 15/6/25
Trinity Sunday – Geoff Stevenson
hope and life and salvation from that which threatens everything. In this space is the deepest yearning of 
the human heart, the yearning to be held, protected and safe from the forces and powers that threaten us. 
This is the space where those deep yearnings become prayers expressed with feelings that are beyond 
words. In this space is the ministry of Christ, who enters our experience, whether named or anonymous, to 
reach out through human (and often animal) love and grace. In this space we yield to the One who is and 
always has been, who is the Love at the heart of everything and will not let us go!
This God is experienced in the deep and profound moments when something does break into our 
conscious mind, something that disturbs and disorients our beliefs and imagination and opens us to deep 
yearning, to awe and wonder, to hope and to new life.
As I stand before this wondrous universe, pondering who I am, a small insignificant human alongside 7 
billion others and countless numbers who have gone before me, I hear words of beauty and affirmation:
LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory in the heavens…
…When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have 
set in place, what are people that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? 
(Psalm 8)
I am drawn into this bigger thing, this Divine Presence that rings its way in and through and around me 
– and you and everyone and everything. This Love that insinuates itself into everything as the very essence 
of being, the spark of life invested into everything. God is the love that holds me to another, in the silence, 
the touch, the laughter and tears; in the food I share with others and the stories of life we offer to one 
another. In the struggle and pain, the breeze and sunshine, the cold and warmth, the hope and the fear, 
God, ‘Trinity of Love’ is here, there and everywhere and flows through every culture and tradition of life 
and wisdom. God is love – and loves us!