Becca Stevens's Blog, page 5

“The Woman I Am Today:” A Guest Blog

Kristin McWilliams, a talented organizer, leader, wife and mom, reflects in the following blog on her first year as an Executive Assistant to me at Thistle Farms. Read on to learn about why she sees it as a gift and how the work on the #thistleroad helps save lives. 

Love, Becca

It is about that time! Fall travel is picking up, and Becca and the women of Thistle Farms are in full travel swing. I love working with all of the organizations across the country and planning the amazing trips of the #ThistleRoad. People near and far love Thistle Farms, and they love Becca and the women. How can you not?

I have been working as Becca’s Executive Assistant for a little over a year now. I have planned countless trips, been on the Thistle Road, and managed Becca’s busy calendar. Let me tell you, she is one busy lady! I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world!

Some days, I am really overwhelmed by the amount of work and details that run through my brain, across my desk, and through my email. Some days, I am panicked that I am going to mess something important up; but everyday I am so grateful to have such an amazing boss and wonderful woman to look up to. Everyday, I get to work alongside women who are powerful and strong. Women who keep me grounded and motivated.

From August to November, Becca will be speaking, and Thistle Farms women will be selling at 20 events across the country. Becca will share how Love is the most powerful force for change in the world, and the women standing beside her will be the proof. Thistle Farms home and body products will be sold, and people will not only love our mission, but find out our products are amazing too. Thousands of dollars will be made and go directly back into the program. We can’t do it alone!

The past year of my life has been the the busiest--but most rewarding--time of my life. I have had several jobs in the past, but this one is by far the best I have ever had. I consider it an honor and a privilege to work with one of the most amazing women I have ever known.

Becca Stevens, you are my light. I am so blessed to be a part of your life. Thank you for giving me a chance! I love my work, and I love my community. It is because of the amazing people I am surrounded by daily, that I am the mother, wife, daughter, sister, employee, and woman that I am today.

Thank you Becca, and thank you Thistle Farms for everything!

Make sure to check us out on the #ThistleRoad!

Many Blessings,

Kristin

 

Midsummer Daydreams

This has been a summer of travel, work, and high altitude dreams. From the Sleeping Giant Volcano in Hawaii, to Porter's Cabin 10,000 feet up in Idaho, to the shrine on the mountain in Ajijic, Mexico, I have felt my mind full of hope and dreams. I wanted to share a few of the images and thoughts with you...

Kauai, Hawaii in June

St. John's Church

Loved being with my husband Marcus and our sons, getting to work in two beauiful churches and beginning to write a mystery called Murder in the Kalahari.  

Marcus, Levi, Caney, Moses and his friend, Ry

Idaho Rocky Mountain Range, July 15-20

With Tara Armistead and Frannie Kieschnick at Porter's Cabin

 The Idado Ridge

Walking along a high ridge,

the sky is big enough

to watch a storm roll in and out,

the mountain is vast enough 

to be its own shadow, 

the wildflowers are tall enough

to look you in the eye,

and the path is long enough

to leave you alone with your thoughts.

 

Passing through that ridge where you

are no more significant than the

ants crawling at your feet,

or no less worthy than the Western Tanager

flitting among the ancient Pine Boughs.

You breath the same air as Star Lilies 

that decide to dance in winds 

that pick up on their own accord.

 

Stepping over small borders

you feel the story of rocky

times when things were not so settled

and eons pass in a moment.

There alongside Hyssop and Lupinen that

are simply going to seed for a moment,

or maybe an eternity you feel free. 

Ajijic, Mexico

The Global Team in Mexico 

Thistle Farms Global went down to Mexico to help with strategic planning for our Shared Trade Partners, the Moringa Madres. Helping start justice initiatives is hard and slow work.  It takes a community not easily discouraged and willing to be humbled by small scale. We had that team, and so it was possible to dream. 

 

Notes from the strategic planning with the Moringa Madres 

Thistle Farms

While I have been away Thistle Farms has been flourishing. I got some updates this week including that the national network has grown 23% over the past six months and now has 27 homes serving women survivors in 19 different states.

I also learned that sales of The Welcome Project mats woven by Syrian refugees (#lovewelcomes) remain strong. They came in at #5 on Thislte Farms best selling products for July.

...I am now off to the plateau of Sewanee to speak at the Monteagle Sunday School Assembly and then on to a retreat center in Massachusetts. I will be teaching for 4 days at the Society of Companions Conference about "How Love Is the Most Powerful Force for Change in the World."  

Thank you for helping make so many of our midsummer daydreams come to life.

Love, Becca

Serve This Faith: Seminary of the Southwest 2018 Commencement Speech

This is the speech I was honored to give at the Seminary of the Southwest Commencement this morning. May we all serve the faith we have been given. 

Love, Becca

As the last letter is sent off to Timothy from Rome, Paul’s disciples are passing the cross to the next generation. The cross their Lord gave to them is being given to a new community.  In 2nd Timothy picking up the cross is not about asking the new community what they are willing to die for, but to give them a new way to live. To pass our faith to ensuing generations is hard. We want the next generation to pick it up and carry cross the right way. Please don’t drag it around and for the love of God drape it in lent. So the first step in passing the cross is for those who have carried it to trust the new bearers. Paul’s disciples begin Timothy’s letter saying, "We really don’t know Timothy. But we are going to trust you because your grandma Lois and your mother Eunice were good people." 

That's how people will feel about the recent graduates of the Seminary of the Southwest as you carry your crosses from this place. People may not know or trust you, and they will critique you as being too Christian or not Christian enough. They will trust you in part because they know your people here at the seminary.  That your dean, Catherine, is a woman of profound poetic faith. Your dean assured everyone in her epistle this year that “you would be educated in the ancient traditions of the faith where you will have opportunities to observe and participate in the gospel speaking to culture, and challenging the church." In Catherine’s letter she assured you that here your education will form mature, wise, and creative Christian leaders to participate in God’s reconciling mission in the world.   

Carry the cross you have been given by our tradition with the three attributes of love, power and self-discipline given to Timothy. Don't be ashamed of what you have learned. Hold to the standard of the teaching you have received and guard the treasure that is your cross. In order to help this happen, let us be clear on what means to pick up our cross...

Bearing your cross is falling in love. It is not thinking you have an unbearable ball and chain to drag around. It is falling in love with God and one another, believing we can do this together. Cross bearing is not an individual sport, and it promises a way of life that is lived deeply and offers you a way to live into the love you bear forever. 

Finally, as Timothy is gathering his community to do some “cross training," he is told not to wrangle over words and to avoid pointless controversies. They tell him--preach the word, come visit, and give your momma our love.You are bearing your cross in hard times. You bear it as the earth splits and spews in Hawaii, as people in Texas mourn the latest school shooting, as the number of refugees hits its highest levels in more than 70 years. You are heading out into a world rife with systematic injustices so entrenched it’s hard to figure out where to walk. It's humbling work. I want to offer you three verbs in crossing bearing as you serve as pastors counselors and teachers.  

Translate what you have learned so that others can understand

You are going to have to engage the marketplace and not just speak the common seminary language. Without translation, the church life and ministry is becoming less relevant because it's not practical, and doesn't impact daily lives. Last week I was on the 700 club in Virginia, the week before I was speaking with the Texas Muslim Women’s Association. 

With both groups, I talked about how love heals, but in both I had to deviate from speaking Episcopalian. Good cross bearing requires us to be translators, unafraid to cross new ground to love the world.  Don’t just invite the public in, go out.  I have learned that a candle with the word love on it translates. There is an economy of love that influences cultures and changes politics. 

I didn’t learn that in seminary. I learned it serving women survivors, who taught me if we talk about love we have to be concerned about the economic well-being of those we bear crosses with. The violence and vulnerability of poverty requires us to learn a new languages.

Strip down what you have learned into what you can inwardly digest so you speak from your heart with passion 

I once buried a woman from the community of Thistle Farms in state custody. They gave us her ashes in a cardboard box. There was no congregation, flowers, or music. I was nervous as the funeral began thinking maybe it’s just too hard, maybe the issues are too big and we are just not up for bearing one another.  After the first sentence of the service, the six of us gathered couldn’t speak because love was so thick you couldn’t cut through it with words. 

We wept together realizing that when there is nothing else, Jesus fills the space. If her life and death represent some of the worst the world can offer--born in poverty rife with systematic racism and abusers who paved a path for her to the streets and prison resulting in disease and death--I will bear my cross gratefully, knowing Love is there when everything else is stripped down.

Serve what you have learned on the path of justice

When you can’t write a sermon, go to prison, not the library, to understand how love is borne. Whether you are offering communion, counseling, or teaching, let your hunger for justice lead you. It will solve your evangelism issues, your finances, and help you sing with joy. We must break bread with tears, and go back out into the world to love it again, and again and again until we get it right. 

As you serve justice, you will not always be inspired, not always see visions, or even believe it all. That is not the point.

The point is to keep bearing the cross knowing the distance between the wilderness and Jerusalem is closer than we think.

Translate, strip it down, and serve this faith you have been given with justice. Then you will bear the cross as beautifully as Timothy, as gracefully as Paul, and as faithfully as all those who have walked this aisle before you.  

It is a big cross. but we can bear it together.    

Getting ready to receive my honorary doctorate from The Seminary of the Southwest with the class of 2018. So grateful. 

God Will Make Time: Love Heals Stress

 

It is a misconception that the stress we feel today is because of the current pace of life, the spread of technology, or the political turmoil we see around us and throughout the world. A great English theologian of the 19th Century, Frederick D. Morris, wrote about the dis-ease of busyness and how it causes stress, a depleted spirituality, and decline within the ranks of the church. He wrote that the busyness that causes harm to us comes from our distrust of God. We search frantically for things to give us peace, but the search leaves us restless. Morris was not saying that we can't be busy; he was saying that we need to be busy with things that matter in this world. When we make our busyness the focus of our life and worth, we become stressed restless and unhealthy. 

“I know that if I make time for God, God will make time for everything else.”

When we learn how to manage the demands on our lives and cope with the worries of the day, we are putting our faith into practice, and we are healthier for it. Years ago, when I was first starting out in this work of healing at Thistle Farms, I met a woman who had eleven children. She said she started every day by going to mass at a nearby church. I asked her how, with all the demands and the stress of that number of children, did she make time for that? Her answer was simple: "I know that if I make time for God, God will make time for everything else." 

She was not stressed, and the peace emanating from her heart taught me a great lesson to carry into my work and motherhood. We will always be busy, but if we have our eyes on the long-term goal of being faithful and the short-term goal of making time for God, everything else will fall into place. 

An excerpt from Love Heals.

Mini-Blog from the Road: Delayed...& All is Well

Recently, I was sitting in the airport, and the departure board flashed the saddest word of all:
"Delayed." Nothing else in my day was delayed but the flight. Not the speech, the board meeting or my son's game I was hoping to catch. So I found myself officially in a bad mood. The irritation caused by that word coursed through my blood stream and transformed into stress, then irritation, then self loathing! "Why do I feel so bitchy?"

As I was trying to get my feelings out & reflect, I had a thought about what it meant that I was typing into my phone to tell the people waiting the whole plan has gone to hell. This feeling and snippy texts are not who I am or how I want to live. I want to be peaceful and kind.

So I told myself to hear the word "delay" differently. I set about to reinterpret the words "flight delayed" to mean "free time to practice a bit of yoga and breath." I didn't know if I could do it, but I was determined.

"Flight delayed"...Breath in and Stretch right...

"Flight delayed"...Breath out and stretch left...

"Flight delayed"...Breath in and bend back...

"Flight delayed" ...Breath out and touch my toes...

I made myself repeat and repeat this until I was no longer glued to the monitors, no longer hating airlines, no longer feeling so lonely that I could cry if i let myself.

"Flight delayed"...All is well, All is well, All is well.

Easter 2018: The Peace That Passes Understanding

“ Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb...”

— John 20:1

Peace Flags at Benton Chapel for Easter 

While it was still dark, I walked into St. Augustine’s Chapel Ash Wednesday. “A Peace that Passes Understanding” was the communal reflection for the Lenten season, and so I wanted to begin Ash Wednesday in silence before the first folks arrived for ashes at 7. All of a sudden I was jolted as I heard yelling in the fellowship hall. Two young men who participate in the overnight young adult homeless program at our chapel were in an argument that was escalating quickly. Within seconds, one of the young men picked up a big baptismal bowl sitting on the altar and hurled it into the wall smashing it. Tables were overturned and chairs were launched. In the few minutes it took to separate them and regain peace, everyone in the chapel was visibly shaken. a small glimpse into what must be experienced by groups following the wake of sudden violence was opened up a crack. 

That disturbing outburst was a reminder of how fragile peace can be. It was a powerful lesson in how the violence of poverty, racism, trauma, mental health, and fear are poised to tear through any of the false walls we believe peace builds to shield us from the truth. Peace does pass our understanding. Our fragile and finite minds cannot grasp the depth and hope of peace that keeps our hearts in the knowledge and love of God. The peace that passes our understanding isn’t an idealistic quiet mountaintop setting; it is the peace in the midst of a wilderness of tables overturned in the temple, of disciples bearing crosses, and in the midst of loving in the face of violence and oppression. The peace that passes our understanding is a proclamation of faith as we strive for justice grounded in love. The peace that passes our understanding is what carries us through the wilderness with courage, humility, and direction.  

The only writing I have from my father, who was an episcopal priest and died when I was five, speaks powerfully about such a peace. The writing is simply a tiny slip of paper that fell out of his prayer book that my mom gave me at my ordination. On that piece of paper are written the words, “In the shadow of his cross may your soul find rest.” In other words, while in the midst of our struggle, may you find peace. My father’s words remind me that the great peace of Easter begins on Good Friday—in the shadow of the cross.

It was in the shadow of the cross where the disciples witness Jesus’s faith and forgiveness. There must have been a deep peace that surpassed her understanding that grounded Mary Magdalene and John to face the uncertainty, fear, and potential violence. While she was still living in the shadow of the cross that Easter morning, she was steady enough to gather the herbs and begin the journey. She headed out prepared to anoint a dead body, not because she thought he was risen. But in the face of injustice, oppression, violence, she was willing to confront the soldiers with her meager offering to anoint the body.  

The story of the Resurrection begins with the words, “While it was still dark….” The shadows of the cross were long as the sun was just rising on Jerusalem that Sabbath as Mary heads out with grief guiding her to the body. And that single act of faithfulness is enough to carry her with a peace that passes understanding to the source of love.

The peace that passes understanding leads her through despair, leads her to brush aside fear, and to hold onto love. The shadows of the Crucifixion became the grounding of a deep peace that changed the world. And that story is powerful enough to unravel all the upheaval, violence, and fear that keep us from experiencing peace. 

It sustains Mary through meeting angels and feeling the earth shake. It catches her when she falls at the feet of love resurrected. That peace is strong enough for all of that--to lead her to be the first preacher and to offer generations to proclaim peace in our own times of struggle.  

During this season, I have glimpsed at such peace that underlies the story of Easter—that peace is our deepest truth. A couple of weeks ago I spoke at a large healthcare company conference about resiliency and women’s leadership. When I finished speaking, I invited two of the powerful women graduates of Thistle Farms to join me on stage and talk about what gives them strength and how they experience healing. We were sitting on three, big oversized chairs with individual mikes like a living room. As the first graduate spoke, tears began to pour down her face. I did not know it at the time, but she was going through a difficult personal tragedy. 

To the executives and overachieving workforce, she said, “I have no words right now, but I know I need to show up and keep the faith.”  She described how in the midst of the chaos she was in, she could trust herself and the community and keep going. Her strength, her tears, her faithfulness were the living embodiment of how we can live into this deep and abiding peace. She was the truth that when we can walk and live in peace, we can have a clearer memory, more strength, and the freedom to weep. There was such grace and truth in her witness, that the executives sitting in that room wept with her. They recognized themselves in her, and she showed them how in the midst of life that can be unfair, hard, and frightening, peace can give us courage. She, like Magdalene herself, invites us to the truth of peace, the strength of peace, and the freedom of peace, even if we don’t understand it. 

Today is the day to proclaim peace as a statement of faith. We don’t have to wait for the mountaintop. We can proclaim it in the valley. We don’t have to wait to proclaim it in the courtroom. We can proclaim it on the streets. We don’t have to wait until the paths are straight. We can proclaim meandering it in the desert.  

That peace, offered by the Prince of Peace, even in the face of trauma, broken hearts, and shattered baptismal bowls, is enough to keep us going. We are sons and daughters of peace. Etched on prayer cloths for centuries across the world are images and words of peace that live within us. We are surrounded by peace and given it as the first sign of the Holy Spirit who breathes it into us. That is the ancient hope that carries us to love.

The Easter story preaches to each of us that when we keep believing in peace. It carries us beyond grief. The stone has rolled, the shroud has fallen and we are free. We can proclaim peace with all those we love who have died and live on in love and the memory of God. Peace carries us through the wilderness to the garden. All we grieve is still a part of us and all our hopes are not in vain. It’s not hard to imagine Magdalene, or the graduates of Thistle Farms, or all of us present, or even the young man torn by such anger that he was willing to smash a primal element in the sanctuary—to imagine us searching for peace with such longing that we set forth in search of the tomb. 

And with glimpses of love’s truth they started running, even though the meaning still feels so fragile. Let us proclaim peace in the shadow of our crosses and live into the hope fashioned on the first morning of Creation. We can be dedicated to justice and truth, knowing we are at peace in the truth that love lives. Such deep and powerful peace allows us even to make our song at our own Easter morning, “Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.”

Love's Humility, Courage, & Compassion: Holy Week 2018

A sweet reminder from a photoshoot we did a few years ago

“But whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

— Matthew 20:27-28

The week before Easter is called Holy Week in the Christian tradition. It's a time to mark both love's sacrifice and healing. We don't focus on love being victorious, but on love's humility, courage, and compassion. This is love's crowning moment. And, there may not be a better week to remember the mission of Thistle Farms and recommit to this sacred work. The mission and our whole extended community is strong, and when we lean into our fears, our pettiness, or our addictions, we are not celebrating love's amazing potential. So I propose another way. 

This Holy Week I invite Thistle Farms and everyone who loves Thistle Farms to do the following...

Monday: Drink a cup of tea and imagine someone you would like to share a cup of healing with.

Tuesday: Say something really encouraging and positive to those you work with to encourage them. 

Wednesday: Anoint yourself with a healing oil and remember you are love.

Thursday: Fast for a meal or two and pray for the whole world---its people, its needs, the women coming out of jail or off the streets or anywhere we can serve in this world.

Friday: Light a candle and ask forgiveness for the times we have not stood for love. When we have gossiped about our neighbors or not celebrated the love that lives in us.

Saturday: Take a break from all social media and listen to your own voice

Sunday: Eat and celebrate all day!

Love, Becca

"Just a Blessing All Around:" Ty's Story

Ty in Manufacturing (Photo Credit: Peggy Napier) 

I was recently given the assignment to interview one of the amazing survivor leaders at Thistle Farms, and I am so grateful to be able to help share her words here on the Boss' blog. I know you'll love Ty as much as I/we do. #loveheals

--Jordan/Team Becca

---

"My favorite Thistle Farms product has always been the candle, and it will always be the candle. Everyday in the Circle, we light the candle for the woman who's still out there suffering in hope that they would find their way home. And I know now that someone lit the candle for me, for years before I ever made it to Thistle Farms." 

--Ty, 2015 Graduate & Survivor Leader 

If you've ever met Ty, you know her choosing something that provides light as her favorite product isn't a surprise. Her smile and kind spirit brighten the day for everyone she encounters. Employed as a Manufacturing Manager, her tasks range from inventorying products and assigning projects based on needs for the day to different team members, training new women, and getting in the mix herself as well whenever she can. So, whenever you purchase our products, you're taking something with you that carries the light women like Ty infuse into everything they make. 

Ty describes her experience of being a Magdalene resident, graduate & survivor-leader as a gift beyond words. "In the beginning it gave me time to rest, to get myself together physically, mentally and emotionally. It also gave me hope, as well as helping me financially and giving me the resources I needed to take care of myself and my family," she says. Now that her experience has come full circle, Ty thinks it's  "a thrill every time I see a new woman come through the door and knowing that they will receive the same blessings that I received." 

Holding "love for every single woman on the team," she is also thrilled to be part of all the expansions and growth that her department has seen through the last few years. Ty explains, "Since I've been in Manufacturing, we've added 7 new machines, including equipment that allows us to pour up to 1500 candles a day if needed, as opposed to doing 100 just by hand." In other words, production is great, and the team and their capacities "are growing everyday." 

For everyone who has supported Thistle Farms and helped make healing journeys like Ty's possible, she offers a sincere and heartfelt thank you: "Our supporters and all their contributions are changing lives. It allows us to buy new machinery and provide new employment opportunities. It allows us to bring in new women to the residential program. The love from our community partners and friends is just a blessing all around." 

 

 

Guest Blog: "A Mother's Story" from the Ritsona Refugee Camp

Abi, the Director of Thistle Farms Global, just returned from the Syrian Refugee Camp in Ritsona, Greece, where the women of The Welcome Project are still leading with strength, grace, and hope in the midst of seemingly impossible circumstances. Abi returned with stories of hardships, both new and old, and more importantly, women overcoming them.

In that spirit, the following is guest blog that was written by Thaura that was originally posted on I AM YOU’s Instagram. She is a survivor of war, the violence of poverty, and vulnerability of homelessness. What a gift to be able to share her story here.

As Thaura writes about wanting things that so many of us take for granted—warm running water, the means to cook nourishing food for her family, and the longing to be reunited with the country and people that she loves—may her words inspire all of us to continue our work to love the whole world, one person at a time…

Love, Becca

 

A Mother's Story

When we first came to Ritsona, there was only cold water. We lived in tents, and all the people in the refugee camp shared a few showers, where we also had to wash all our clothes. It was hard times.

My husband was already in Germany. He left Turkey before us while the borders where still open, so I was alone with my three children. They all had their own problems, and having to keep their spirits up in camp was heavy. It was hard for my husband also, not to be able to help me. But at least we were able to talk over the phone to support each other.

We had already left Damascus and my husband’s tobacco shop already in 2015 to go to Salamia (city in Western Syria) where my family lived. My son had to leave his psychology studies after only a year of being in the program. But we had to leave also Salamia when Daesh (ISIS) came. We fled to Turkey and stayed for a year. When we got to Chios in Greece, the borders where closed, but we could still leave the island to reach Ritsona.

Things have gotten much better in Ritsona. We live in ISO boxes (converted shipping containers) and have communal kitchens. I am able to cook a lot on my little stove outside my house as well. When we first came here, we only had the bad army food that we tried to make more tasty by adding spices and other ingredients. Now we can make the food ourselves, and since we get the same vegetables and spices as in Syria, we can make the food we are used to…

In October of 2017, I joined the Welcome Project. We are weaving mats from blankets and life vests. It's a very good project. We do something during the days that is worthwhile, and we earn money. I hope I could continue with the same kind of work when I get to Germany, but if not, then I could take Merkel’s place!

It's been almost two years now since we came to Greece. We are still waiting for the family reunification tickets to go to Hannover (Germany) to my husband and my eldest son. But if the war ends, I want to go back to Syria—to my parents and the beautiful landscapes of Salamia.

--Thaura Mustafa, Refugee & Survivor Leader, 43

Thaura & her children in the camp 

It is not what we are looking at, but what we see

Transfiguration Sunday 2018

Mark 9:2-9

We hear the story of the Transfiguration twice a year in church. The first is the last Sunday of Epiphany and then again at the feast of the transfiguration on August 6th. I have been ordained 26 years, and it is always so humbling to try to preach the Transfiguration on the 6th of August. As you remember, it is also the anniversary of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The dichotomy of thinking of this cloud in the sky offering life and transformation and this horrible, horrible image and reality of death and violence--I always think about that. This is a beautifully strange Sunday, a beautifully strange celebration, that happens in season that is mostly about unrequited longing and fulfillment. And yet, that we get these moments of pure vision... 

I also think of this as “Baby Ruth Sunday" because this is the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. I always gave up Baby Ruths for Lent when I was a kid. So every time I hear this Gospel, I have a Pavlovian Response and want to eat Baby Ruths because Lent is coming. This is the week we get to think about what we want for our Lenten season: what we want to take on, what we want to give up, how we want to be clear. This is the moment before, the moment that hangs in the balance between the divine light of Epiphany and the beautiful season of reckoning in Lent. 

This simple, but powerful, Gospel has so much to teach us about the journey. We remember it is not what we are looking at, but what we see. It’s all about this idea that the Transfiguration of Jesus is actually about transfiguring us. The Gospel writer tells us that the moment before the Transfiguration, the disciples are wandering around hurriedly, wondering what this ministry means; but soon as there is the moment of Transfiguration, their eyes are set on Jerusalem.

Transfiguration gives us hawk eyes: clarity, vision, freedom from distractions. The needs of the world did not change before the Transfiguration or afterwards, but the destination became more urgent and poignant. So, for us. in our lives as we seek transfiguration and moments of clarity, we cannot be distracted. (Remember this passage was written before social media...) We know the goal. We know the destination. On the spiritual path, the destination is important, not the just the journey. We’re headed toward love, so don’t be distracted by all things that will call you away in your life. It's a a time for hawk eyes.
 
The second lesson of this Transfiguration is about embodiment. This was not just a head trip. This was a “body” trip where there was glowing and fear. There was physical change. They get there, not out of the blue, but out of a lot of hard work and giving up so much. That’s how they get to the mountain. They get there at the cost of a lot in their lives, and they walk up there together in a community. So, then I ask how are we transformed and transfigured in these bodies? 

The third and final point of this passage, along with the reminder of how important hawk eyes are and the connection between physical and spiritual transformation, is that transfiguration is always the aftermath. You get these moments of insight, a glimpsing at glory and the beauty of the heavens touching the earth. And there’s a cost, and the cost is the change in us.

Don’t be mistaken. The disciples are changing more radically than any white garments that Jesus displayed. They are tearful and fearful and excited and inspired; their lives are different forever. If you long for transfiguration, be prepared to change.

And that sucks. It’s hard to change. It’s hard for me to change. It’s hard for me to say, “I need to let go. Or I need to take on. Or I need to feel different in this world. Or I need to understand the world differently. Or I need to pray differently. Or I need to act differently.” Those are true for all of us. We need to change if we long for transfiguration. If we want to love and glimpse at this wondrous gift, we have to change. 

This weekend, I was preaching at the Diocesan Ministry Convention in Northern Indiana, and they were talking about transformation. They were asking how do we as a diocese hope in community, learn from each other, how do we make changes in this world?

The bishop was upfront, a beautiful, kind man, and they invited us to begin that transformation with the hundred of us all gathered in a circle at that moment. Jennifer, one of the Thistle Farms’ Survivor Leaders was in the back. She lit the the candle and offered the words that we use to begin the weekly meditation circle at Thistle Farms saying, “We light this candle for the women on the streets, and we light this candle for the women trying to find their way home.” In my head, I was thinking, "Isn’t that the way it is?" She has the Simeon viewpoint in the back. She is going to have to speak in a loud voice because the mics are all up front.

Jennifer who is such a powerful, powerful witness on the road said, “I’m the person that you feared when I was on the streets, when you walked by me. I was the person in prison that you may have prayed for, but didn’t come visit, I represent the hundreds of women who are still trying to find their way home. And now I have become the light.” When she lit the candle, I looked back up and realized in very back of this cathedral was a beautiful stained glass window of St. Andrew. St Andrew was raising his hand in a blessing, and the sun was hitting it just right so the glowing in the stained glass was falling on Jennifer, the light that was lighting the candle for everyone else.

Just for a minute, I got to see it, the light that changes everything it touches. 

I wish we could live like that all the time. We see this light shining down on each other and the face of God. Everything else goes away, and you do want to stay there. You do want to say, “Can we just stay a little while longer in this beautiful peace and love, where all our judgements get passed aside and where all our fears about our own place in this world get left behind and we just feel love?” I want to live like that so bad, and I am so grateful to Jennifer for the light that she brought. Thank God for when we get to see it and when we get to live in it.

May we have those hawk eyes to experience it and take it in. May we have the journey and the destination clearly in our mind. May we embody it with everything we have, and may we be humble and courageous enough to live it out.