A glimpse of how things really are

For that one moment, ‘in and out of time’,

On that one mountain where all moments meet,

The daily veil that covers the sublime

In darkling glass fell dazzled at his feet.

There were no angels full of eyes and wings

Just living glory full of truth and grace.

The Love that dances at the heart of things

Shone out upon us from a human face

And to that light the light in us leaped up,

We felt it quicken somewhere deep within,

A sudden blaze of long-extinguished hope

Trembled and tingled through the tender skin.

Nor can this blackened sky, this darkened scar

Eclipse that glimpse of how things really are.

~ A Sonnet for The Feast of Transfiguration, Malcolm Guite

When I was a junior curate I visited a parishioner, Fay, who shared with me a vision she had had of Mary, The Mother of Jesus, whilst sick in hospital. She said that Mary stood at the foot of her bed and told her that she would recover.

Finding myself outside my own spiritual framework, I stumble around for words and said something like, ‘Weren’t you privileged to have that visitation’. Fay responded by saying, ‘It wasn’t a visitation. I saw something that was and is always there.’ She was absolutely certain that she had had a glimpse of reality. And for her, it was a very sustaining glimpse. It gave her great comfort and a deep and abiding sense of the presence God and of the Communion of Saints. For Fay, the term the Great Cloud of Witnesses had a particular and proximate meaning.

Fay’s take on reality came to mind as I contemplated The Feast of the Transfiguration that we celebrated on Sunday and Malcolm Guite’s Sonnet, written to honour that Feast.

Guite speaks of the mountain top experience (Luke 9.28-36) that the disciples have of Jesus being transfigured in a way that reveals his true identity, as being a glimpse of how things really are. By the way, this encounter is most likely the reason the term ‘mountain top experience’ exists.

Fay and Malcolm Guite remind us that experience and reflecting on experience are important parts of our religious life and identity. Too often religion is reduced to being only about doctrine, conceptual frameworks and moral codes. Behind all of that is the lived experience of countless generations and the shared reflection on what that lived experience means.

This idea finds reinforcement when we remind ourselves that the whole Christian project is built on lived experience, the experiences of the first disciples on that first Easter Day.

Ash Wednesday which falls on Wednesday opens the season, the Season of Lent, in which we give ourselves the space to reflect on our lived experience, to reflect on the call that comes to us through our baptism and to prepare ourselves so that at Easter the light in us leaps up in response to the light of the risen Christ.

Peace,

Peter+