Tags
apostles, blinded by the light, Jesus, light, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, transfiguration
It was 7:43 EDT this morning when I saw the outline of the sun through the trees on our back hill. I don’t know whether to call it a mountain or not. It seems very high and I don’t know what it would take to scale it—or how to get around it and where I would be if I found myself on the other side. I often think about that but go no further than my thoughts because if I asked someone and got an answer of how to get around it, the mystery would be gone and I would not know what to do without the wonder of it all. This way, the way of not knowing, was swallowed up this morning in a blaze of glory as the full sun moved into focus and became the only light. The brilliance was all I could see and the shining was all that was left. Normally I (and others) would pull a curtain to minimize the light—but I have no curtain hanging there now as I’m in the midst of shifting elements of my bedroom. (And really, why would I ever want to miss anything happening outside?) I could have moved my chair but that would call for more shifting and still the light might obscure everything.
So I just sat until the sun had moved past the perimeter of the window (knowing, of course, that it is I who was moving as the earth moves around the sun). It was a metaphor, to be sure, and I have often been “blinded” by the sun. Today, however, I sat and consciously experienced what was happening as I sat surrounded by darkness. The shimmering brilliance was all that I could see and it was difficult to stay in it—in the way we are told not to look directly at the sun without special glasses during an eclipse. I thought about all the places in Scripture that speak of apparitions: the Transfiguration of Christ on the mountain, for example, where Peter, James and John were blinded by the light and when they looked up, they saw “only Jesus.” Can I say I am changed by this experience of light? Will I remember how nothing else was visible but darkness in the presence of that light? Who can say what awaits…maybe if I ask about or try to scale the mountain. What might I learn to see then?