Since it’s Sunday, and since I’ve just written two pieces on the Transfiguration, I thought that this week, I’d share some story snippets about transforming moments along my journey.

The first memory I have of a brush with the infinite was when I was almost-four or just-turned-four, when we were living in Army quarters in Indiana while my dad finished college. It was a summer afternoon, and I remember swinging on a swingset. The sky started to turn that strange pink color that it can get just before a thunderstorm, and the air felt electrified, expectant. The world seemed enormous around me, grass stretching out on all sides to the woods far away. And I knew a monster was coming. Godzilla, to be precise. I was frightened, and I ran inside. Mom wanted me to take care of some chore or other that required me to go outside, only a little ways, but still outside. I refused, huddled by the window to watch and wait for Godzilla, shivering with fear.

The next brush with the divine that I remember happened the next year, when we were living in Pensacola, Florida. I was walking home from the bus stop, the only child at my stop, so I felt all by myself and very grown up as I walked past three, maybe four, houses to get home. As I walked that day, I felt the houses and gardens and cars and trees and sky and everything around me expand.
I realized, suddenly, that all the other people I encountered every day were, well people. People like me. They had thoughts that ran through their heads all the time, like I did. They had feelings - like happiness and sadness and anger. They liked some things and didn’t like some things. And every last one of them was different, individual, unique. Possessing, in fact, a soul. I did not have these words for the sense that overwhelmed me that afternoon, but it stopped me in my tracks.

In fifth grade, I had the opportunity to make my first communion. I’d been drawn to the quiet church for some time. When we had junior choir practice (The Son Shine Kids!), on our breaks, I would find myself pulled into the nave week after week, just to soak up the silence, the dim light, the atmosphere charged with the numinous. (No, I didn’t have those words then, either.) On the morning of my first communion, I was the only child going forward. The rector called my name and invited me to the rail before anyone else received. I stood and walked to the front. I know I was walking normally, but the moment of that walk transcended time and reached into eternity. I remember the walk to the rail and the return walk to my pew - I remember the green chasuble, the priest standing there with the gleaming paten, the white-robed chalice-bearer next to him - but I do not remember actually receiving the elements that morning. I do know I was changed. Once again, as at my baptism, I had been marked as Christ’s own, forever.