Mark 9:2-9

In thinking about this story, I wondered about the times when, like the disciples, we see Christ revealed in unexpected places and ways. I remembered a time that I’ve been trying to put into words for years. Here’s my latest attempt. Maybe you have a memory you could try to put into words too.

Transfiguration
after Mark 9:2-9

The light was just afternoon sun, slanting through her living room window.
Her hair was white, this teacher, her blue denim skirt did not shine.
The cloud was hours, too much coffee, middle-aged weariness,
all effort is what we were that day, we disciples.

I’d traveled miles and more than miles, left a way to be, left certainty,
unsettled in my leaving. Yet here my heart was strangely home.

Her voice was just her voice, and then, she never mentioned sheep, so why
did I begin to hear that shepherd’s words in echoes underneath hers?
She wasn’t sure, she said, but she would leave a group alone
to follow after one who left. She couldn’t say why,
she said, but I knew why.

It was just my tears that made the edges of the furniture waver.
It was just the dust that shone. Even so,
in that dusty, sunlit circle with the edges wavering and she
going on, I whispered to the one I least expected to meet there, Oh—
so you are here. You’ve been here
all along.

—Laurie Baron

Cathedral of Christ the Light

These notes provided by the Cathedral of Christ the Light:

When Christ was transfigured, appearing in radiant glory with Moses and Elijah, the disciples wanted to build booths for them. When we build churches today, such as the strikingly transcendent interior of the Cathedral of Christ the Light, are we trying to “build a booth” to contain God? Or are we transformed ourselves when worshiping in a church of great beauty?

The Cathedral, located on the shores of Lake Merritt in Oakland, is designed with the symbolic representation of Jesus Christ at its core. The 58-foot-high image within the Omega window (pictured here) is created by natural light passing through aluminum panels that have been pierced with 94,000 holes. This image is a depiction of Christ in Majesty, borrowed from the sculpture of Christ in the central doorway of the west entrance to Chartres Cathedral in France. The use of natural light in the Oakland Cathedral symbolizes the movement of salvation history, climaxing with the tangible, powerful, presence of Christ. As the sun moves across the sky, the movement of light transforms the worship space.

The intentional design of this sanctuary, active in its beauty and its theological meaning, reveals the reciprocal exchange of love between God and humanity. As humans, we offer our humble devotion, and God’s presence is strongly felt. In a place of such beauty, natural and human-made, there are possibilities of transformation—transformation and devotion are brought to life in an exchange of heavenly and earthly love.