The Sauntering Pilgrim

Some of you remember a television game show from the 1960s called To Tell the Truth. A guest with some unusual occupation or experience would appear with two impostors to be interviewed by four celebrities who tried to identify the authentic guest. After some questioning, the host would say, “Would the real [guest’s name] please stand up.” Then the panelists and audience would learn a little more about the guest.

In today’s reading (Mark 9:2-9), it’s almost as if Mark says, “Would the real Jesus Christ please stand up.” We call it the Transfiguration, but I like the German word for it better – verklärung. It means something like a revealing or a clarifying. In the Transfiguration, Jesus’ true identity was revealed, and who he was became clear to those closest to him.

Mark tries to describe a mystery, which by its very definition cannot be described. We probably ought not even try, because it’s beyond every thought we might have and beyond the power of words to describe. It can only be experienced – as Annie Dillard wrote, like “the revelation of a dancer who for my eyes only flings away her seven veils” (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek).

And it was very much a now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t thing. As Mark tells it, almost as soon as Jesus’ clothes became dazzling white – and his face “shone like the sun,” Matthew adds (Matt. 17:2) – the vision blinked out and God’s beloved Son became Jesus of Nazareth again, the one the disciples were familiar with (Mark, 9:7-8).

The story has me wondering not about who Jesus was but about who any one of us really is – about who I am – behind the masks we wear, the artfully crafted personas we present to others, intentionally or unintentionally, that obscure who we really are. And I’m wondering how we might see others truly and not as who we believe they are or want them or need them to be in the moment – about how we can value each other as we really and authentically are.

And I believe that’s most of what we really want and need after all. Because seeing and valuing each other as we are “without error or confusion, without substitution or imposture” (to quote Francis Bacon), is the only way to enter into an authentic, enriching, healing relationship with anyone and especially with ourselves. Seeing each other and being seen truly for who we are – that’s a risky, rare, and fleeting experience, and it may be the only way to the life we yearn for.

How can we see each other, and be seen, that way? How can we see in each other the light that shines within? How can we know each other “without error or confusion, without substitution or imposture”? How might we recognize even a fleeting glimpse of the Christ in each other and they in us? The story Mark tells gives us some clues.

And it begins when Jesus withdrew with his closest companions to a place apart, by themselves (Mark 9:2). They left what must have been the frantic busyness of their lives for a place of quiet solitude where they could be with each other and truly listen to each other without distraction or interruption.

Philip Glass, whose music we’re hearing this morning, wrote, “The problem with listening, of course, is that we don’t. There’s too much noise going on in our heads, so we never hear anything. The inner conversation simply never stops. It can be our voice or whatever voices we want to supply, but it’s a constant racket. In the same way we don’t see, and in the same way we don’t feel, we don’t touch, we don’t taste.”

It’s not a question of how we can claim time to be with each other without distraction or interruption, it’s a question of will we? Starting where we can, even for a few dedicated minutes, will we lower our screens and filters, forget our histories, surrender our preconceptions and prejudices, dispense with any other agenda, and make an opportunity for the other person to enter our consciousness on his or her own terms?

Many years ago in the autumn of the year, in what turned out to be one of the most moving and memorable conversations of my life, Bob Young and I retreated to a simple shelter in the Shawnee Forest in Southern Illinois, and seated before an open fire, we talked. And quite unexpectedly, our conversation became the sharing of histories, disappointments, and confessions, along with plans and visions and hopes. It became an opening to each other in a spiritual communion that clarified for me the best of what is possible between two people.

With somebody, anybody, but especially with your closest companions, if only for a few minutes, get away regularly to a quiet place. Leave the noise and busyness of ordinary life, and the noise going on in your own heads, with no agenda whatever, to simply allow for the opening of your hearts to one another “without error or confusion, without substitution or imposture.”

You may catch a fleeting glimpse of the light within each of you, and even that fleeting glimpse may clarify your life, and it may clarify the life you share with every other person you meet. And you may know what the reign of God is about. ▪