hey beloveds,
i am clearing out my old drafts in my blog. here’s some stuff that i started working on and then didn’t finish. there’s going to be a lot, so it will take some time. the only change i am making is to give this little introduction at the beginning, brief comment at the end, and then to add “graveyard posts [#]:” to the beginning of what the title is saved as. there will be lines separating the post i drafted and these intros and conclusions. so enjoy this look at how my mind has worked overtime.
I grew up loving the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling. I abandoned my love for a while, but have recently come back to them. I discovered a delightful illustrated storybook edition of each of the books in the series. What delight! It was like becoming a child again right there in the middle of half-priced books.
I was reading the chapter in the first book where Harry and Hagrid go to Diagon Alley to buy Harry’s things for his first term at Hogwarts. There was a list of items to get like schools in the muggle world: supplies, books, uniforms, equipment, etc. The book list – and one item in particular – really caught my attention. On Harry’s required textbook list for Hogwarts was “A Beginner’s Guide to Transfiguration.” I sat in wonder for a while upon reading this; my sanctified imagination run amuck with possibilities.
I wonder if maybe we as Christians need to take a queue from Harry Potter’s reading list. Maybe we also need a beginner’s guide to Transfiguration. For the beautiful story of Jesus’s transfiguration as recorded in the gospels and remembered by St. Peter in his first epistle has been largely forgotten by His church. Maybe we need to begin (or begin again) with the central events of the Jesus story, among them being the Transfiguration. We spend a lot of time talking about Christ’s birth each year and yet that event is only recorded in two of the four gospels whereas the Transfiguration is in three out of the four gospels.
We need a beginner’s guide to Transfiguration and the way to learn Transfiguration is by first studying the Transfiguration. For Transfiguration in the Christian imagination begins at the revelation at Mount Tabor, but it does not stay there. Once the uncreated light of God has shown down upon us from Mount Tabor it tends to break through into every sphere of our lives; we tend to bring it back down the mountain with us like Moses’s face aglow after Mount Sinai.
i still think we forget the Transfiguration to our peril.
a.
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