There is a stone at Newgrange in Ireland carved five thousand years ago, before the pyramids. Three spiral arms emerge from a hollow center, each arm distinct, each arm moving, together forming one shape. The builders aligned the chamber so that once a year, at winter solstice, the sun fills the central space with light.
I do not know who carved it or what they intended. I know it is the oldest continuous symbol of what I have been trying to say.
The theological word for the inner life of the Trinity is perichoresis. Mutual indwelling. The three persons — Father, Son, Spirit — are not arranged in a hierarchy with a top. They are not orbiting a center. They are each fully present to each other and together fully one. The Greek root is close to the word for dance. Three distinct movements, one motion.
The triskelion is that argument made visible. Three arms. Not one arm with two satellites. Not a center with two followers. Three, each moving, together one.
I started using this mark in my work a few years ago, before I could name why. I was building a framework for how a business finds its message — three turning movements, each distinct, each necessary, none primary. The shape kept appearing. I thought it was aesthetic. It was not.
It was the same shape I had been trying to live in ministry: no senior pastor, no single voice at the front, everyone part of the turn. A team where the preaching rotated and the authority was distributed because the presence was distributed. I found it in two classmates who planted a house church together. From the outside it looked chaotic. From the inside it looked like what the Trinity does on a Tuesday.
For us — for Ecclesia, for this gathered community — I want the shape to mean something practical.
It means no one person holds the center. The center is held together.
It means the person who walks in the side door during the opening song and sits near the back is not peripheral. They are one of the arms.
It means formation is not something the pastor does to the congregation. It is something we do together, each turning, each bringing what we have actually lived.
The stone at Newgrange is five thousand years old. Once a year the sun comes in.
We are still learning what the shape is trying to say.
This piece is adapted from a longer essay at Southern Legends.
Read the full essay →
Matt Headley
Founding pastor of Ecclesia Community. Ordained United Methodist. Flower farmer. Builder. I walk with a limp. That is why I can walk with you.
We discuss pieces like this in the Ecclesia community every Tuesday morning.