D. H. Lawrence has said “people can do anything they want with an idea, but a truly new experience changes everything. Before you can do anything with it, it does something with you!”

In Eastern Orthodox Christianity, theology starts with experience and opens to the teaching (‘doctrine’), not the other way round.

This quote comes from Eastern Orthodox Priest Kallistos Ware about the experience of G-d as not a static ‘ideal’ nor as an idea but as the experiences of G-d as a community that dances in generative love, in transformative nonviolence.

“The doctrine of the Trinity ought to have upon our life an effect that is nothing short of revolutionary. Made after the image of God the Trinity, human beings are called to reproduce on earth the mystery of mutual love that the Trinity lives in heaven- Because we know that God is three in one, each of us is committed to living sacrificially in and for the other; each committed irrevocably to a life of practical service, of active compassion. Our faith in the Trinity puts us under obligation to struggle at every level, from the strictly personal to the highly organised, against all forms of oppression, injustice and exploitation. In our combat for social righteousness and “human rights”, we are acting specifically in the name of the Holy Trinity.”

-Father Kallistos Ware,

(The Orthodox Way, p.39)