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 tomorrow and the first day of Lent. Sunday, we heard 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, but we never saw before 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. Transfiguration is also about experiencing our true nature, the part of God inside us. 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.

 

Enneagram Retreat and Epiphany

“The good news is we have a God.. who remembers who we are, the person who knits us together in our mother’s womb, and who wants to help restore us to our authentic selves.”–Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile in The Road Back to You (IVP Books 2016), p. 23.

Our former rector at St. Mark’s, Danny Schieffler, once invited the staff to the retreat center for our diocese, Camp Mitchell, for a day to study the Enneagram with Presbyterian minister and therapist Rebecca Spooner. Usually, staff retreats are about planning sessions for the year or exercises, such as the Myers-Briggs personality inventory study, to see how we can better relate to each other.

Knowing someone else’s Enneagram number can be helpful. Still, the heart of the Enneagram is about personal growth, learning about the mask we have developed for survival, and finding our true self, the person God created us to be. So, our rector gave us a day away from our usual work during a busy liturgical season for our own personal enrichment. I wish I had done that when I was in the medical field, letting those I worked with know how much I cared about their personal growth. Let this remain an example for all of us.

This was my third Enneagram study course. The well-known sin of my Enneagram number is pride, and it was front and center when I heard about the retreat. Of course, I already knew all this. But to my amazement, I learned much more. This is my second lesson. Exposure to a spiritual tool such as the Enneagram is more awakening each time we go through this process.

We spent much time on the Enneagram during my spiritual direction study. More and more, I see why. This tool helps us know who we are, the mask we have developed that has become our persona, and what the world thinks we are to make our way in the world.

Rebecca reminded us of Richard Rohr’s famous definition of the Enneagram, “the coat and hat we put on to weather the storm.” This persona has helped us survive, but we are now searching for our true selves, the person God created us to be. Learning about our Enneagram number can lead us to find our relationship with God that this mask we have developed has blocked.

The Enneagram is not for everyone. Rebecca reminded us that it is only one tool in our spiritual toolbox. If it is helpful, stick with it. If not, there are so many other tools to connect us to God. But if we relate to it, there is more gold than we can imagine.

This is an ancient tool proven to be true over many centuries. Epiphany is a great season to learn more epiphanies about ourselves through the Enneagram, especially if we study it with other spiritual friends.

Nouwen: Love never Dies

Nouwen: Love never dies

“When we lose a dear friend, someone we have loved deeply, we are left with a grief that can paralyze us emotionally for a long time. People we love become part of us. Our thinking, feeling, and acting are co-determined by them. When they die, a part of us has to die too. That is what grief is about: It is that slow and painful departure of someone who has become an intimate part of us. But as we let go of them, they become part of our “members.” As we ‘re-member’ them, they become our guides on our spiritual journey.”–Henri Nouwen, August 26, 2018, Henri Nouwen Society, Daily Meditation, from Bread for the Journey, henrinouwen.org.

The God of my understanding does not give us a person we love deeply and suddenly allows that relationship to end with that person’s death. Ours is a God of love. The love from that companion we so profoundly cared about is still there with us. We are still in a relationship with that person, but in a way we do not understand. Their love does not stop. Our love for them does not stop. Death is not a period at the end of a sentence, but more like a comma.

Sometimes, when we remember events of ordinary and extraordinary times with the person we loved, we will also feel their presence and wisdom. We can still talk to them in this new relationship, which is still a mystery. Nouwen believes we can sometimes be even more intimate in this relationship than in real life. It is their love that we feel.

Love continues and never dies. Our loved ones are now in some way always present with us, while in life, they were only present when they were physically with us. Some people find it helpful to wear a piece of jewelry or clothing as a physical reminder of a relationship that is now spiritual.

The grief recovery work we have been involved with for over twenty years, Walking the Mourner’s Path, believes that one of the most helpful ways to stay in a relationship with our loved one is to honor our relationship. Amazing transformations have occurred. People have started suicide prevention programs, built walking trails, written books, developed new careers in helping professions, built halfway houses for those in recovery, and given land where their loved one died to habitat for humanity.

For myself, I returned to the church and stopped smoking when my Grandfather Whaley died to honor him. My grandfather’s love cared for me while he lived and saved my life, even in death. I still feel his presence today, even over forty years since his death, especially as I write about him this morning and send that love on to my grandchildren.

Over the past several years, I have been rereading letters my grandfather wrote me in college and medical school over sixty years ago. Words cannot express what it is like to feel his unconditional love through now-typed antique letters. I share some of his letters with you in Letters from My Grandfather, A History of Two Decades of Unconditional Love.  

grandfather’s siblings