Transfiguration and the Last Sunday of Epiphany

Transfiguration and Last Sunday of Epiphany

"If we want to find God, then honor God within ourselves, and we will always see God beyond us. For it is only God in us who knows where and how to look for God."­—­­ Richard Rohr Adapted from The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2009), 159-161.

Today is the last Sunday of Epiphany, where we say goodbye to Alleluia and prepare for Ash Wednesday and the first day of Lent. Sunday, we hear the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus when he is revealed on a high mountain to three of his disciples as the incarnation of God. Anyone in 12-step recovery can identify immediately with transfiguration, seeing the light, a moment of clarity, encountering the God who has been there all along within us. Still, we never saw the light within because we were busy making "dwellings" for other idols, alcohol, food, drugs, work, etc.

Moments of transfiguration occur in our lives when we are transported from our deep unconscious sleep to a moment of conscious bright light when we see, feel, taste, and touch God within. Transfiguration is about experiencing our true nature, the part of God inside ourselves. It is the moment when all else falls away, and we are simply of God and desire to turn our life and our will over to the care of God. It is that moment when we let go and let God.

Richard Rohr believes we cannot see God in others until we first see God within ourselves. So, recovery is seeing God first within ourselves, which leads us to being able to see God in others. We encounter that person who once annoyed us, and we begin to notice a tiny glimpse of the face of God, and our only response is now love.

Frederick Buechner reminds us that as we see God within ourselves, we begin to see God in situations we never saw before: "the face of a man walking his child in the park, a woman picking peas in the garden, sometimes even the unlikeliest person listening to a concert, standing barefoot in the sand watching the waves roll in, or just sitting with friends at a Saturday baseball game in July. Every once in so often, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human face that it's almost beyond bearing." 1

Transfiguration is the message and the promise of a new way of living, seeing God's face in others and ourselves.

Today, we are gathered on the internet over many miles to celebrate the new eyes that transfiguration continually brings to our lives and the face of every person we encounter.

1Frederick Buechner in Whistling in the Dark (HarperSanFrancisco 1988), p. 120.

Joanna. joannaseibert.com. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Guenther: At Home in the World

Guenther: At Home in the World

“Inevitably, even if we are persistent and faithful, there will come a time when God seems not to be listening or speaking to us. We have entered a desert time. Maybe our icons-our windows to God- have turned into idols. That is, the form of our prayer has become more important than the prayer itself.

We can find ourselves attributing almost magical power to our methods of centering prayer, Ignatian meditation, or reading the daily offices of Morning and Evening Prayer. We can become so preoccupied with following our rule of life that we can forget where we are going.” Margaret Guenther in At Home in the World, A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us.

Well-known author and Episcopal priest Margaret Guenther reminds us that we do not come into the world equipped with a spiritual road map or owner’s manual, so we must write our own. We cannot download a spiritual MapQuest from some celestial source with precise directions for turning each corner.

Guenther gives us an easily readable book about how to follow a rule of life and still live in the world. Our rule will be different at varying stages of our lives.

She offers ways to live in the awareness of the preciousness of each day, living every day as if it were our last, constantly reminding ourselves that time is a gift from God. Each chapter discusses a distinctive aspect of our lives: our families, our solitude, our creativity, our money, our fear of abundance, our friends and enemies, our prayer, and our use of power.

The chapters are followed by questions for reflection, making the book an excellent choice for a small-group study.

I first read At Home over ten years ago, but I still learn something new or a new practice whenever I pick up the book. Whenever a person comes to mind, I call, visit, text, or pray. I also learned this from my spiritual director in deacon training, Dan McKee.

Guenther discusses how Sabbath is not merely ceasing to work but celebrating something that makes us new and re-creates ourselves. She reminds us that an ongoing association with children, “who live closer to the ground” than we do, can be a powerful source for re-creation, a new creation.

Guenther consoles me when forgiveness comes too slowly. She describes forgiveness as a great block of ice that melts slowly and cannot be hurried. “There is no spiritual equivalent of a microwave.”

Joanna joannaseibert.com

The World Within

  Charleston: Magdalene, The World Within

Repentant Magdalene National Gallery Washington DC Georges de La Tour

“How hard it is sometimes to live in two worlds, the one we inhabit with the people around us and the one we live in alone. None may know the pain we hide, the deep wells of worry into which look the memories that enfold our lives like a forest. But the Spirit knows, cares, understands, and is ever beside us to offer comfort and counsel.”—Bishop Steven Charleston Daily Facebook Page.

The Repentant Magdalene

A few years ago, I spent time with a 394-year-old friend I have known for the last thirty-five years. We first met when she was one of three Georges de La Tour’s Magdalene paintings at a rare National Gallery of Art exhibition. She was the only one in their permanent collection. Before an important meeting in Washington, I visited her that morning, and she quieted my soul.
I instantly fell in love with her. She spoke to me as no other painting has before or since. This Magdalene sits with her left hand on a skull. She does not look at the skull directly but sees the skull’s image in a mirror in front of her. The chiaroscuro scene is dark and only illuminated by a partially hidden candle beside the skull. I talk to Magdalene and thank her for her insights.

 For me, the skull represents our insides, the inner life, what our skin covers up, the Christ within, and the negative parts of our unconscious. Over the years, this Magdalene has taught me that we most often see inside ourselves by looking into a reflection, a mirror. Seeing what we are beneath our surface is too painful and overwhelming. We cannot look there directly. It is like looking at the sun. The mirror represents the reflection we see of ourselves in others. We learn and understand the authentic parts of ourselves by seeing ourselves in our neighbors.

 God calls us to community to learn from others who we truly are. I best see my own soul, the Christ within me, as well as my many unconscious character defects, by first seeing them in others. We learn about our unconscious character defects by first becoming aware of them as we see what they look like in others.

Caring for our soul is finding Christ within ourselves by first seeing what is holy in another. The Christ in our neighbor soon helps us realize the miracle of  Christ’s presence also within ourselves.

Next, we are called to share it with others.

If we do not pass it on, our image of God stays too small.

Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/