Transfiguration and Anti-Transfiguration
On this day on 1985, I was emerging from my first ever
visit to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. It had been a magical morning. The windows
were inspiring. The dark interior of this medieval structure was ethereal. I
could readily see how people thought they had left the material world altogether
and entered into a different reality inside this structure named for the Mother
of G-d, the very heart of medieval Christendom.
There had been a noon service in English, French and German
that we had attended. It occurred in the crossing of the church lit by
spotlights. It featured prayers for peace that only later would become clear to
me in their salience.
We were invited to a 12:30 PM mass in one of the side chapels.
It was conducted in French. My reading proficiency French did not provide me
much access to the sermon. But if you are from a liturgical tradition, be it
Roman or Eastern Catholic, Anglican, even Lutheran, you know the language of
the mass. And you respond accordingly when the times are appropriate, allowing
you access to the liturgy regardless of its tongue.
As we emerged from the dark interior of Our Lady of Paris,
my eyes squinting at the afternoon Paris sun, I began to notice a series of
images of human bodies on the sidewalk around the cathedral entrance.
I was an American tourist going into the cathedral. When I
emerged, I was forced to encounter the results of American foreign policy. The outlines
of the bodies had been spray painted by demonstrators commemorating the
Hiroshima atomic blast some 40 years past that very day. Not only were a
quarter million human beings lost that day, within days that destructive feat
would be repeated in Nagasaki.
Beyond the immediate human carnage, this would prove to be
the kick start of a nuclear arms race that would have me trembling in my seat
as a fourth grader learning to “duck and cover” in the event atomic bombs from
a Cuba just 90 miles (30 minutes travel time, we were told) from my state’s
southern shores would be lobbed by an enemy at least as frightened as my own
government as we were of theirs in 1962. If John F. Kennedy did nothing more,
his defusing of the Cuban Missile Crisis will always be an accomplishment that
I, as a Florida elementary school child, will remember with gratitude.
The Transfiguration is a lesson in changes in the world in
which we live. What is striking in this story is that Jesus engaged the divine
in a way that changed forever the way his disciples saw him. Then they are
faced with the tough job of trying to relate that experience of the divine to a
world in which such experiences are not the norm and those who experience them
are seen as deluded if not crazy. It’s hardly surprising that, according to the
Lukan writers, “they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the
things they had seen.”
Who could you tell? And who would believe you? And what words would you use to
describe the same?
I believe there are events that we humans encounter,
especially those of us who make ourselves available to them, which have the power
to change our understanding of the world in which we live and our lives as a
result. I am fortunate to have encountered the divine in a wide array of displays
in my own life time, most of which I cannot adequately convey to others. I am empathetic to the attempts of those disciples to relate those encounters, albeit beyond our
capacities to understand. Thus I commemorate this day the events that transfigured
the Jesus I follow and the events, some 2000 years later, that would transfigure
the world in which I live.
A posting on this subject refers to this day as both the Transfiguration
as well as the Anti-Transfiguration. I believe this is well taken. From a Jungian
perspective, opposites must always be held in balance. The transfiguration of
Jesus, which reveals the presence of the divine among us, must be held in
tension with the anti-transfiguration of Hiroshima which threatens the very existence
of the human beings Jesus came to awaken and call to lives of peace and justice.
That posting can be found here:
This day I am grateful to the Jesus whose Way I follow, to
the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris (may she quickly be rebuilt) for the lessons
she provided me, and to the lessons offered by the people of Japan who endured
the baptism of humanity into the modern age at no small cost to her people and
culture.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
frharry@cfl.rr.com
hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com
If the unexamined life is not worth
living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is
not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.
For what
does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk
humbly with your G-d? (Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures)
Do not be
daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now.
Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are
you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami
Shapiro, Wisdom
of the Jewish Sages (1993)
© Harry Coverston 2019
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