29: Second Sunday of Lent
I was visited by a Middle School student last week. We were solving all the problems of the world (or at least the question of non-uniform attire on St. Patrick’s Day) …when she glanced behind me and asked,
“Hey Sr. Bearss…what is that?” — I turned and wasn’t sure which of the countless things (or piles) she might be referencing.
“That grey thing. Is that from a museum?” she asked intently.
“This?” I asked as I stood up. She nodded affirmatively.
...(I wasn’t sure whether I should laugh or cry)...”This is a telephone.”
“Really…” she was both intrigued and fascinated, “how do you talk in it and where do you listen?” Trying to appear calm, cool and collected, I pointed out the features of my classic 1998 desk phone.
“Where, she pondered do you dial — and how do you text?” her curiosity and enthusiasm were palpable.
I gave her the chance to call me (on my cell phone, of course) — and before she was whisked away for her next class, she left me with a line that is framing my next week of Lent…
“Sometime you have to tell me more about that. I love hearing about what you did in the olden days…” In a split second, I realized that I was now being categorized with Laura Ingalls Wilder and Little House on the Prairie.
Lent, you see, is all about change —
some of it I am aware of — and sometimes like the antique object that I use daily — change happens around me and I have to leap to catch up.
Lent is about making change. Perhaps in large ways that are mile-markers on our journey. I have said some good-byes lately that feel that way — to both people, ways of thinking and attitudes — but mostly, change happens as i keep it very simple and just “make the next right choice”
Today’s gospel — the Transfiguration — teaches me of the inside and the outside of things. To be transfigured or transformed changes the very nature of things and is often transitory — it remains only as long as we need — to be certain that what we have experienced becomes real.
But when the moment has passed, it never really leaves us…because we are changed.
Births, deaths, heart attacks, incredible grace — those moments when life stands perfectly still and for a moment something is transfigured within and around us … and try as we might, we never go back to normal.
Like the phone on my desk that will never be the same — or the day that I realized that God created both the parts of myself that I celebrate and those that get in my way — or the day that those planes hit the Towers in New York and I knew a piece of what it means to lose a child …even if she was my student, not my daughter…or the moment that my niece gave birth as my mother was dying and the paschal mystery wasn’t a concept any longer.
Welcome to Change week — grab that old land line and let’s make some change!
It’s going to be a week like no other!
