How are we transformed? How do we display that transformation to others? We are at the end of the Epiphany Season in the church calendar today and we are provided with a mysterious transformation: Jesus' transfiguration on the mountain. So much of this Epiphany Season is about transformations and change. All of these accounts we have heard these past few weeks about healings and casting out of demons and curing the sick, they all concern some form of change, some kind of transformation happening. And they all involve mystery..... There is mystery in most transformations.

I have made no secret of where I think St. Thomas' Parish DuPont Circle should head.  The vision that Matt Jarvis has brought to that future is bold, beautiful and prophetic.  And I am inspired by what I see on the walls downstairs in the parlor.  The question for me, rather the challenge is can it be bolder?  Where is the balance between that, which is practical and what is truly inspirational and prophetic?  Do we pitch tents for prophets past?  Or do we become a local, national and even international center of a community of believers that want to proclaim God's abundant love to any and all of God's children and engage a broken world in the work of reconciliation and renewal?

My childhood next-door neighbor was named April. She never had mud on her face or skinned her knees-she was the icon opposite the tomboy imperfections of the rest of us. April was not only the goody-two-shoes who smugly reveled in the downfalls of the rest of us neighborhood-sinners...she also managed to be the first in line for everything at school, as well as the first to shun the new fat kid who moved into the neighborhood. She was like the dark side of a cosmic Martha Stewart, making sure we all knew that the standards that really mattered in life were hers, and that virtually none of us would measure up.

Often, I have confused the concept of being a child of God with being Godly. I have sat in judgment of those to the right and left of me who were in pain, who were lost, who were self-hating. I have put myself up as better than them, more aware of the world and what lies beneath its surface. That somehow, I have some erudite knowledge of God that no one else does. The hilarious thing is that armed with that false knowledge, I look in the wrong places for Him. I look up into the sky expecting to see God, or look down at the ground beneath my feet because of some people's teachings about damnation and unworthiness.