I remember driving in the car with my daughter in the spring of 2003 as she talked on her cell phone with her fiancee in South Africa. That blew my mind! At that time I had a cell phone that lived in my purse turned off (kind of like carrying a phone booth with you). It only got turned on for emergencies!
This morning I was sitting on my bed just out of the shower communicating back and forth by emails and texts (including photos of the overnight snowfall) with a granddaughter in England, a friend from 80’s who lives in France, and a longtime friend from the small town I grew up in! Had we wanted to the text messages could have added a live picture in FaceTime! What really is mind-blowing about this is that it now less that 20 years later this all seems so normal!
This past week’s reading for the Transfiguration in the synoptic gospels ( Matthew 17:1-8, Mark 9:2-8, Luke9:28-36) tells of a similar experience where James and John were with Jesus on a mountain top when suddenly Jesus in dazzling white clothes was talking with Moses and Elijah. James and John certainly had never expected this to happen nor did they even begin to understand how it was possible... just a little bit like my experience in 2003 with the cell phone! I kept on driving at that time just as James and John did( so the story goes)by offering to build three houses, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah there on the mountain..
Today we would call this mountain top experience a visual hallucination. In the gospel writings, the authors often ascribed happening to Jesus that were also ascribed in the Old Testament writings to Moses, Elijah, or both. Such are the story of Elijah and the widow’s son (1 Kings 17:17-18), and the story of Moses feeding the Israelites with manna ( Exodus 16) So it is not unusual that those two figures were to appear with Jesus in this mountain top experience.
Once we understand why those figures of Moses and Elijah appeared with Jesus in this story, then we can see that it is only cementing the connection between these three great prophets. It is important that we remember that the gospels writers, like Jesus himself, were Jewish, raised in the synagogues, with a first hand knowledge of what was written there about the prophets.
Seeing the story of The Transfiguration in this light, can make it becomes more understandable, as my current experience with testing and emails helps me put that phone call of 2003 into a new perspective.
Hi Lynn: Your story reminded me of one of my own. I am not sure if this would be considered a visual hallucination but it was a transforming moment and enabled me to let my mother go after a period to time in hospice. After her first night there following a massive stroke, a cardinal appeared on her window sill. The hospice staff told us that this bird lived in the garden of the hospice and had been a widower for years. With some exceptions, cardinals mate for life and this one had stayed single for several years. The nurses said he only appeared at certain windows at certain times and was indeed considered to be a bit of a legend.
ReplyDeleteOn the last evening I spent with my mother, I was making tea in the hospice kitchen and when I looked out the window, the cardinal was staring back at me but this time, he had a mate with him. This struck me as odd because for over several years he had been well known to be on his own. This gave me a very deep sense that my dad was somehow 'circling in the wings' and a peaceful transition was about to take place...which it did. I have since discovered that cardinals are considered to be messengers from God and whatever happened that evening was a great comfort. Whether one believes that or not, that moment in the kitchen helped me a great deal to prepare for that earthly loss in the very ordinary moment of making a cup of tea.
Judy Imrie
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