Icon of the Transfiguration by Theophanes the Greek (in the public domain)
TRANSFIGURATION
We recall to memory the Transfiguration, aglow with dazzling white like Gandalf the White, you, the Christ, depart from humanity’s day to day appearance to reveal humanity’s true face, true nature to the startled three. Low toned conversations with ghosts of Hebrew past painted in wisps of white, about paths of pain, paths of disillusionment yet to be. These whispers, as pale and cryptic to the ear as the pale outline of the ghosts.
I step to the mirror, searching for that glimmer, that glimmer of white light hidden behind my eyes. Not the white that streaks my ever thinning hair, but that dazzling white, that aura assigned by artists to the memory of heroes and heroines of past history and ancestry.
I await my own transfiguration, yet, here I stand at the mirror and peer at the reflection of the same person, the same baggage and sins, I struggle to carry with great exertion up the slopes of my own Mount Tabor. Does my transfiguration, my promised true human self await me at the top? Or, just the thin, wispy, pale ghosts of my past carrying on a conversation in whispering tones?
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Deacon Bob
I am a composer, performer, poet, educator, spiritual director, and permanent deacon of the Catholic Church. I just recently retired after 42 years of full-time ministry in the Catholic Church. I continue to serve in the Church part-time. I have been blessed to be united in marriage to my bride, Ruth, since 1974. I am father to four wonderful adult children, and grandfather to five equally wonderful grandchildren. In my lifetime, I have received a B.A. in Music (UST), M.A. in Pastoral Studies (St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity, UST), Certified Spiritual Director. Ordained to the Permanent Diaconate for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, in 1991. Composer, musician, author, poet, educator. The Gospels drive my political choices, hence, leading me toward a more liberal, other-centered politics rather than conservative politics. The great commandment of Jesus to love one another as he has loved us, as well as the criteria he gives in Matthew 25 by which we are to be judged at the end of time directs my actions and thoughts.
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