Faith in Progress

February 25 2 Lent Mark 8:31-38 Most years, I have trouble with this season of Lent — with its often too-heavy (for my taste) emphasis on sin and penitence, and its negative take on our mortality, and its penchant for minor key dirge-y hymns, and its stories about humanity at its violent and hateful worst, and its focus on Jesus going to his death instead of his incarnation or resurrection.  I often find myself longing to edit these things out.  To take out some of the darkness and emphasize the light. But this year, Lent actually did feel lighter to me at the start. For Lent this year, I signed up for a six-week Ignatian retreat through a church in Georgetown.  The retreat started the Sunday before Lent began with a beautiful candlelit gathering of all the people making the retreat.  We shared where we were and what we were hoping for and were led on a beautiful scripture meditation before being sent back into the world.  From then on, every week I would meet with a

Transfiguration Sunday Mark 9:2-9 Have you been to the mountaintop?   In our gospel story, Jesus leads Peter, James, and John up a high mountain and is transfigured before them — “his clothes became dazzlingly bright, such as no one on earth could bleach them.”  And suddenly the religious biggies appear with Jesus - Moses and Elijah.  They look in awe and wonder at their teacher, leader, and friend.  This experience gives the disciples a new understanding of how Jesus fits into the story of God, and maybe even a new understanding of how they fit into that story too.  They are forever changed by having been invited into this moment. But there are lots of ways of getting to the mountaintop, and there are lots of different experiences up there. I think of the speech Martin Luther King gave about his mountaintop experience.  In the midst of all the trouble and confusion broiling around him, in the midst of death threats and uncertainty, he spoke of having been to the m