Transfiguration Yearnings

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time thinking about transfiguration.  I was working on a blog piece for the Living Lutheran site; it will appear on Monday.  I was also writing my blog piece for yesterday's meditation on Sunday's Gospel.  In between, I spent time with my friend.  We worked on transforming scraps of cloth into quilts, while we talked about how we'd like our lives to change.

I was also thinking about Ash Wednesday as I thought about possible projects that would fuse photography and poetry (for more on that project, see this post on my creativity blog).

Today, I'm thinking of Ash Wednesday and Transfiguration Sunday from a different angle.  Today is the fifth anniversary of the death of my friend's mother  (a different friend than the one in the first paragraph). 

During the last year of her mother's life, I tried to help by being an occasional driver. I remember driving down to the Catholic hospital in Miami. I don't think I realized that it was a Catholic hospital until about the 5th time I saw a crucifix on the wall. Not being a Catholic myself, I thought, how gruesome, can't they choose something more cheerful for decorations. And then, it hit me; I thought, "Wait, I bet this is a Catholic hospital!"  Funny how that revelation transformed my whole thinking as I started seeing the crucifix as a comforting reminder that God has promised that death will not be our final answer.


I remember my friend's mom trying to be brave that day, trying to converse with people, trying to act like everything was normal, as if we were there for tea. I have a vague memory of her talking about how proud she was of her daughter (my friend), and an even vaguer memory (which may not have happened) of her trying to charm a doctor on her daughter's behalf, as if she was a matchmaker. I remember that my friend was trying to get information about how much longer she might last in her declined state, even as she was trying to act like we were all there for a social event.

I remember marveling at how my friend's mother was trying to be charming, even as the cancer was surely eating away her brain.

I remember thinking about how the roles had changed, the daughter becoming caretaker.  My heart broke into bitty pieces for my friend, who had to learn how to be a caretaker, how to navigate the medical-industrial complex--all sorts of new languages for her to learn.

Life will transfigure us in all sorts of way, especially as we face disease and old age.  I understand Peter's response to the Transfiguration on the mountain top, that wanting to build a shelter and stay put and pretend that we can escape the ravages of living.
 
We can't escape of course.  Not even God, who became human and lived with us, could escape.  But fortunately, these experiences can become transfigured into a glowing experience of the love of the Divine.

Meditation on This Week's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, February 19, 2012:

First Reading: 2 Kings 2:1-12

Psalm: Psalm 50:1-6

Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 4:3-6

Gospel: Mark 9:2-9


I often approach Transfiguration Sunday by thinking about ways to transfigure myself. In just a few days, we enter the season of Lent, that season of ash and penitence. Lent gets us ready for the joy of Easter. Lent gives us the perfect opportunity for self-exploration, to analyze our behaviors and beliefs that keep us from being Resurrection People.

What do we need to transfigure ourselves? We could start with the basics: daily prayer (ideally several times a day), daily spiritual reading, weekly worship, tithing of our resources. We could surround ourselves with people who lead us to be our better selves, while we look for ways to help others be their best selves. We can be the path that helps other people find their way to God. We can practice radiating love. We can be the agents of God's transfiguring power.

You may say, "I can hardly get out of bed every morning, and now you want me to radiate love???" You may say, "I can hardly pay my bills and now I have to be the agent of God's transfiguring power?"

This year, I, too, find myself feeling exhausted. I think of adopting a Lenten discipline that says no to more activities. Instead of exploring a new spiritual discipline, as I have done in many past years, maybe I will say no to adding a new discipline to my schedule.

But before I get too busy rejecting all sorts of possibilities, maybe it’s good to return to the idea of transfiguration. How do I wish to be transfigured? What would make me glow with God’s goodness?

I’ve been reading Lauren Winner’s latest book, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis, which explores the life of a woman who has made her living as a professional Christian of sorts who has a bit of a mid-faith crisis (for a complete review, go here). The part of the book that resonated most with me was her experiment with giving up anxiety. She tries ignoring her anxiety in 15 minute increments. She decides to pray when she feels anxious, sometimes praying the Jesus prayer ("Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner"), sometimes a prayer she finds in the back of a prayer book. She tries repeating the word "One" until the anxiety ebbs.

She's clear on why it's important to let go of the anxiety, quoting Francis de Sales: "The anxious heart, in its flailings, loses its hold on whatever graces God has bestowed upon it, and is sapped of the strength 'to resist the temptations of the Evil One, who is all the more ready to fish . . . in troubled waters'" (page 90).

I found myself underlining this part of the book more than any other, which makes me think that I still have work to do when it comes to anxiety. I say that I trust that God will provide for me, yet my anxiety shows that I’m not as transfigured as I wish to be.

Soon, we celebrate Ash Wednesday, a day that reminds us that we are here on this earth for a very short time. Rather than get morose about this subject, we can use this as a prompt to ask ourselves what's important in our lives. Are we living daily lives that are in sync with those values? How can we make adjustments to ensure that we are not wasting our brief time here?

God promises to transfigure our lives from dust and ash to living light. Again and again, God declares transfiguring love: not just for Jesus, but for all of us. In a world that rejects us in so many ways, it's good to remember that God claims us, every day. In God’s creation, every day is Transfiguration Sunday.

Feast Day of St. Valentine

Of course, February 14, Saint Valentine's Day, hasn't been a true feast day for decades.  But as Christians, why not celebrate love, along with the rest of the Western world?  You may be saying, "But I have no love in my life right now.  I am as solitary as a stone."

But God has good news; you are surrounded by the love of God, in ways you cannot even imagine:

You say that you wish someone would send you flowers?

God sends us bouquets in every season!

If God sent you a Valentine, what would it say?

Of course, God has already sent the ultimate Valentine:

And so we are sent into the world, living sacraments, to be Valentines to one another, to show a weary world the wonders of God's love.

And God is always at your side.

Thoughts about Love Before Valentine's Day

Our pastor went off lectionary yesterday.  If I was a pastor, I would avoid a holiday like Valentine's Day, but our pastor is fearless.  He talked about famous couples in the Bible, and pointed out that the unhappiest marriages came from one or both partners being unable to be happy with what they had in the marriage.  He talked about that desperate yearning for more and that inability to be satisfied that can contaminate many a marriage--or any other human relationship.

Along the way he talked about the perfection of God's love for humanity.  God's love should be a comfort.

As I parked the car before church, I was listening to NPR's This American Life, which was also broadcasting a show about love.  A young guy was talking about how he thought that marriages should expire every 7 years, at which time couples can renew or not.  Maybe he didn't say that about all marriages.  Maybe he was just talking about how he planned his own marriage.

The interviewer, Ira Glass, offered an eloquent defense of marriage.  He said he thought that one of the comforts of marriage was that during the bad days you knew that you had a commitment, you knew that you wouldn't just leave and that your partner wouldn't just leave.

I think that in America we do a bad job of learning how to manage our emotional lives.  We think our feelings are real.  We forget that the emotion we have today will likely be gone by tomorrow.  We forget that our bad feelings are often triggered by all sorts of things that have nothing to do with how we really feel.  Low blood sugar has caused many a fight--and probably more divorces and break-ups than we like to think about.  Many of us go through daily life fatigued.  We think our boredom and sadness are caused by our families or our friends or our jobs--and that might be the case--or we might just need more sleep.

So, as we begin the mad rush to Valentine's Day, let us take a moment to remember the gift of being able to love each other.  Let us remember God, who first loved us, and who will love us long after all other love falls away.

Embroidering Hymns

When she was planning my grandfather's funeral in 1984, one of the hymns that my grandmother chose was "Children of the Heavenly Father."  Several years later, one of her friends found a counted cross stitch kit with the first verse and bought it for my grandmother.

My grandmother has never done counted cross stitch, so she gave the kit to me.  I wanted to do it for her, but when I first looked at it, I wasn't sure.  It was the tiniest gauge of fabric I'd ever seen.  I thought I might go blind.

As with so many activities, though, once I got into a rhythm, I was fine.  I spent the summer of 1990 stitching, and then, my mom made the arrangements to have the work framed.  My grandmother has had it every place she's ever lived, and when she died, I reclaimed it.  It now hangs over the beautiful dresser that came from my spouse's side of the family.  It fits with the antique vibe of our bedroom.

We sang the hymn at my grandmother's funeral too.  I spent much of the funeral wondering why I wasn't more weepy--but when we sang that hymn, I cried.

That hymn is now heavy with significance for me:  2 funerals and a craft project in between.  If I had more time, I would embroider more hymns.  If I was really entrepreneurial, I would create the patterns and market them.  But that's not where I am in my life right now.

So, I'll look at the needlework every day and remember my younger self who diligently stitched a project that would bring my grandmother such joy.  I'll remember the peace that comes from discerning the pattern and filling in with floss.  I'll look at the needlework and remember the comfort contained in the words.  I'll remember my elders and try to live in the wise ways that they modeled for us.

A Must-Read for Those at Mid-Faith or Other Stages

Some time back in December I found out that Lauren Winner had a new book coming out the end of January.  I spent the next weeks wishing it was already out.  I got it a day or two after it was released, and it did not disappoint.

Winner's new book Still:  Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis explores the life of a woman who has made her living as a professional Christian of sorts who has a bit of a mid-faith crisis.  You may remember Winner from her past books, most famously Girl Meets God, the story of her conversion to Judaism and then her conversion to Christianity, all before the age of 23, if my memory serves.  Winner went on to write more books, to be a contributor to many Christian magazines, and to get a Ph.D. in History.

She also got married at the same time that her mother died and quickly felt unsettled in the marriage.  She wrestled with Christian teachings on divorce.  Perhaps more important, she began to feel a shift in her relationship with God.  She had been a Christian who had a running discussion with God, and now she didn't feel like doing it anymore.  This book chronicles her passage through this post-divorce, mid-faith time.

She includes many a musing on middles and what they mean.  As a culture, we tend to focus on beginnings and endings.  She talks about the middle voice that some languages have (English doesn't).  She talks about continuing with practices, like going to church, even though she doesn't quite believe in their usefulness in a way that she once did.  She progresses through the liturgical year and lingers in Lent, which is appropriate for the subject matter of this book.

I especially love her meditations on giving up something for Lent and her experiment with giving up anxiety.  She tries ignoring her anxiety in 15 minute increments.  She decides to pray when she feels anxious, sometimes praying the Jesus prayer ("Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner"), sometimes a prayer she finds in the back of a prayer book.  She tries repeating the word "One" until the anxiety ebbs.

She's clear on why it's important to let go of the anxiety, bringing in Francis de Sales:  "The anxious heart, in its flailings, loses its hold on whatever graces God has bestowed upon it, and is sapped of the strength 'to resist the temptations of the Evil One, who is all the more ready to fish . . . in troubled waters'" (page 90).

Her book is full of wonderful quotes like these, quotes from great Christian thinkers and quote-worthy thoughts of her own and from her friends.  Along the way, we get prayers, we get history, and we get to see her find some comfort in the ways that Christians have always felt comfort:  through prayer, through community, and through service to others.

In the end, she doesn't recover the breathless passion of her early conversion, which is no surprise to me.  Like marriage, the middle passage of a faith journey is long and often boring and sometimes colored with a tinge of terror (what if I have just been deluding myself?).  Winner has done a great job of depicting that landscape.

She does this without being too maudlin, too depressing. In fact I found it comforting.  We're not a culture that talks easily about our uncomfortable emotions, at least not in an authentic, deep way.  Winner does.  I imagine there are many readers out there who will say, "Wow!  The doubts that I feel occasionally, the boredom, the laziness--you mean those are normal?  What a relief."

Her book is an easy read, with stand-alone chapters that a reader can dip in and out of.  I zoomed right through it, but I imagine that even if I had had to put the book down for a period of time, I would have had no trouble when I returned to it.  For those of you who like the writing style of Anne Lamott or Kathleen Norris, you should be sure to check out this book.

There's an interview in the back of the book where we find out that Winner is pursuing the Episcopal priesthood, and her book doesn't really tell us how she got from her mid-faith crisis to deciding to become a priest.  Maybe she'll talk about that in a different book.

Kairos Time, Chronos Time

In my leadership roles, I tend not to take a long view of time.  I have deadlines that must be met this week, this month, maybe 6 months out.  I tend to work on those projects.  Sometimes the project stretches out due to delays beyond my control, but basically, like many people in the industrialized world, I want to see results and I want to see them soon.

Working as a Church Council president has been both rewarding and frustrating.  I'm coordinating 9 to 12 Council members, and larger chunks of church membership.  Everyone has their own schedules and views of what things should be done and when.

And sometimes, no matter how hard we work, we just cannot accomplish a task that we have deemed important.  I've been feeling like this inability to move to completion is a massive failure of leadership on my part.

Happily, my pastor doesn't see it this way.  Or perhaps he does, but then he reminds himself that the Holy Spirit moves in a different way.  Perhaps as a Church we haven't been able to accomplish certain things because it simply wasn't the time for it yet.

It's the difference between Kairos time and Chronos time.  In the youth groups of my past, we talked a lot about this idea.  As an adult, I've lost sight of it.

The world moves rather rigidly on Chronos time.  We march forward to the incessant beat of the clock.

Kairos time talks about the right or opportune time.  It's often a more indeterminate time, an opening, a qualitative measure rather than the quantitative measure of Chronos time.  In theological terms, we often use the idea of Kairos time when we talk about God's timetable rather than the timetable we create.

I find it a comforting idea.  It doesn't let me off the hook completely.  But it reminds me that I'm not the one in charge.  I have ideas about where I'd like to move the Church (both on the local level and the national level), but God may have different ideas.  And since God has a much broader perspective than I do, I need to learn to stop struggling in this Chronos world and move more gracefully in Kairos time.