Transfiguring Lent: Resources for Preparing in the Snow

Transfiguring Lent: Resources for Preparing in the Snow

Feast of the Transfiguration

15 February 2015

Gospel: Mark 9.2-9

This weekend, Rochester was visited by Winter Storm Neptune, causing many to cancel services.  This post includes a homily and two original songs based in the Feast of the Transfiguration, and with an orientation towards preparing for Lent.  If you or folks from your community missed church today,  I humbly offer these as a possible way to connect with God today.  

Unsure if South Wedge Mission would share their fate, my friend Matt Townsend of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester and I went out to nearby Highland Park to record a short homily about snow, beauty, disruption, and the ways that Transfiguration makes Lent into a time to "inhale, and be rejuvenated by the grace of God as we seek more life."  

Also, please enjoy samples of SWM's two latest worship songs.  Inspired by Hindu kirtan music and by the Taize community, I take a simple word or phrase from scripture, tradition, or literature, and then we sing it repeatedly.  The goal is not content-focused, but communion-oriented - we hope that by sinking deeply into the repetitions and the words, the music creates a space for us to enjoy our intention of being in community with God and with one another.

The first piece, "St. Iraneus Song," is based on the church father's famous quotation that "the glory of God is a human being fully alive."  The full text: 

The Glory of God

is God's children

fully alive

and full of life

We will sing of the beauty

and the duty of delight

We will dance in the light 

The second, "Eagles' Wings," was written for last week's text from Isaiah 40.21-31, but also speaks about the process of Lent - one, as the 12-step groups note, is about "progress, not perfection." Full text:

Arise Beloved Child
and run and not grow faint
Shine like the rising sun
and fly on eagles' wings



Grace, peace and more life unto you!