If you should see this in time.
If you should see this in time and want to join.
If you should see this in time and want to join and have the luxury of time to join.
And if not, I will be there.
The video conference link is here: https://meet.jit.si/CoffeeHourWithFriends2021
The password is HenryTaylor
Sometimes all of my best intentions and plans can’t make a thing happen. It may even be that I need sometimes to fail a little at something small, so that I can understand how to move forward with bigger things. So that I can stop thinking in terms of failure and success. This is how I feel about making a change that I have needed to make, this moving away from the spicy dopamine delivery of Instagram to a slower, less visible, more intimate space. A space quiet enough where we can really consider a poem, or how so many people around the globe are delivering and listening to sermons based on agreed upon texts from the lectionary.
According to the Christian calendar, this is Transfiguration Sunday. The Gospel reading is from Mark, and it doesn’t itself explain much about what “transfiguration” might mean:
9:2 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 9:3 and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. 9:4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. 9:5 Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 9:6 He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. 9:7 Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” 9:8 Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus. 9:9 As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
There’s some connection to the Law of Moses, a binding to tradition. There’s the fact of Jesus choosing just Peter, James and John. There’s the voice in the cloud. There’s the command to “tell no one,” which has become so loaded with trauma in the modern day of the church.
In fact all of the readings for this Sunday are in some way about veiling or unveiling. All week I have been thinking about the spiritual power of creativity, and the faith required to make things. And how sometimes it’s a privileged and even terrifying unveiling, and I feel like Peter, James and John watching something extraordinary take place inside my own mind and body, but most of the time, I am the others, left behind to sleep and wait for more manageable revelations. The poem I have been thinking about and rereading today is by Henry Taylor:
feeling is mutual 