Transfigured/Transformed?

An interlude reflecting on an anniversary, a feast and a death

David first brought up marriage in a park on the edge of Upland, IN. We were sitting in a culvert, a cool cubbyhole that reminded me of my childhood park. This one went under a walking bridge, and I don’t recall any water trickling through.

We’d been dating only a few months and had a somewhat rocky friendship before the dating began.

I was dating someone from high school; he was, too. His relationship was spewing its last gasps. Mine was showing clear signs of infirmity. Anxiety and depression made me grab the door handle and consider doing exactly what Ladybird does in the opening scenes of the movie named for her. (This movie resonates on so many emotional levels for me.)

I knew my relationship with the boy from my church wasn’t going to last by the first months of my freshman year, but it took me a whole year to stop flipping the “breakup/stay-together” switch.

I finally killed it after he left for his summer internship in New Jersey. It came as a shock to him, because I’d tried to trick myself with a last-ditch offer to “go all the way.” Not an explicit invite, so much as cracking a door.

Is this what you really want? He asked. I cried. I already knew I had feelings for David, and I was trying to find a way to make myself do what I thought everyone expected of me. (Again, to be a little heavy on the movie references, a bit like the heroine of Saved.)

To this day, I’m so grateful that boy didn’t take me up on my overture. Not having a complicated sexual history has been for my salvation. I don’t think my conscience would have handled it well.

Here’s the thing. Marrying David 30 years ago on August 5, before we knew it was the Feast of Transfiguration, initiated a slow transformation. I knew I was “marrying up” when it comes to emotional awareness and grace in the face of imperfection. What I didn’t know was how transformation and transfiguration would become keywords in my life.
On our 10th anniversary, we took our kids to David’s parents’ house and had a two or three-hour meal on our back porch. David’s dad was dying of pancreatic cancer. When we picked up Mae and Alex, his dad said the last words I think we heard him utter. He could barely move his jaw, the lack of nutrition had so emaciated him. But he mouthed, I lu you.

This is what he wants to say to all of us. I said it out.

His dad died about 33 or so hours later, in the wee early hours of August 7, a Sunday morning. David skipped church to be with his mom and siblings. I took the kids to church. At the time, the priest farmed full-time since the church couldn’t support him, so we celebrated the church feasts on Sundays.

The day we buried David’s dad was hot. So, while others watched as the pallbearers walked the casket to the hearse, I buckled the kids in the car and turned on Sufjan Stevens.

“For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti” came on, and David crawled into the car somewhere around the last part of the song. I was weeping. David was already taking distance classes at the seminary and on track for some kind of ministry. He’d spent those last weeks of his father’s life delivering mail, picking up the kids, dropping them off with me, grabbing his guitar and going over to sing songs, read Psalms, and listen to his dad’s life review- the cycle of I’m not ready yet. God still has stuff for me to do; to I’m ready.

I have called you preacher, I have called you son
If you have a father or if you haven't one
I'll do anything for you, I'll do anything for you
I'll do anything for you, I'll do anything for you
I did everything for you, I did everything for you

I did everything for you, I did everything for you

Afterward, I think I need to rinse the tears, so we listened to Seven Swans¹ and then the Transfiguration Song

What does it mean to be transfigured? I asked myself. What’s the difference between transformation and transfiguration?

The best way to visualize transfiguration in our lives (not Jesus on a mountain with Elijah and Moses) is one of the final stories in the first of the Tales of the Kingdom series. (Warning, these writers have fabulous story ideas and an adoration for adjectives that some editor should have taken ink to).

In the books, there’s a city run by a fire-setter who insists everyone be awake in the dark and asleep in the light. He drives the people to want and desperation, and when parents die, he takes the orphans into servitude (aka slavery). Some escape to a nearby wooded sanctuary, a park where the King visits as an ordinary-looking vagabond and the Caretaker and his wife provide a home for the orphans. There, they discover that everyone has a gift and is encouraged to hone it and live in joy.

The one rule is to avoid keeping the dragon eggs that are laid once a year. Little dragons grow up to breathe fire and could destroy the park. On feast days, a kind of safe fire circle is lit by the guards under the Caretaker’s leadership. Everyone can walk into the circle, where they’re transfigured to be their true selves. Inside the circle, they no longer wear their ordinary clothes but are dressed and coiffed in the finery of the Kingdom. And the King comes in, wearing his crown. They commune together.

The illustrations in the first edition are lush.

In short, the story is a delightful allegory of Christus Victor², Christ as Victor, where we’re created good, but in a broken world, we suffer loss, wounds, abuse, and the desire just to see what would happen if we disobeyed the wisdom warning us away from keeping dragons as pets.

To be transfigured is to be seen as you are, created in goodness for goodness.

To be transformed is to change form. I just finished What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo, where she explores epigenetics, abuse, therapy and what makes our minds spiral, our behavior needy.

So, sandwiched between my marriage to David, which has changed the form of us both so that we make each other better humans and deepen our faith and my father-in-law’s death, is one of the great feasts of the church year. One that points toward resurrection, that draws the continuity of Christ in the old dispensation before his Incarnation to the new order of Creation. In this one, there was a leap forward that points to full reconciliation, signalling a progress for humans where we move beyond the primitive need to scapegoat, where death has no sting.

I can say this, living out this faith and building toward a better relationship in our marriage, I’ve been able to see a bit of myself transfigured. But the mirror of one good person is not full, because humans are finite. The door that cracked open in these years of marriage was kicked open in friendship. I’m amazed at all the friends I’ve made and kept for decades, and some I’ve made more recently, like my Wayward Writers and Shenanigals, some people via church, who have mirrored back what I might look like, if I could shed my shame.

I’m supposed to work on gratefulness. One per day is about all my Eeyore self can often pull off. This is it: that we get moments of transfiguration in our lives. And what a beauty it is.

Here’s the Transfiguration Song for your enjoyment.

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2. One explanation of how this shows up in Orthodox Christian Christology. https://orthochristian.com/105429.html One caveat. Orthodox doctrine has levels of “dogma” with The Nicene Creed and the Gospels at the top. Everything else is an unpacking in answer to questions raised by humans in the context of their time and built upon for better understanding.