We were graced last Saturday to experience our Lenten retreat day “How Big is Your God?”, led by a profoundly gifted spiritual teacher, Fr. Philip Chircop SJ. One appealing aspect of Fr. Philip’s approach was the way he integrated music, art, humour, and poetry as tools to help us expand our vision of God. (For more on the retreat, please read the “Grapevine Press” insert in this week’s bulletin!) As well, the release this week of the film version of “The Shack”, based on the W. Paul Young best-seller which sold over 10 million (!) copies, provides us with a fresh invitation to meet God in a new way. Not only will it give you new insight into the problem of pain and suffering, but you will also never image the Trinity in the same way again! Another voice which is helping me enter into this Lenten season is that of Anglican poet and mystic Malcolm Guite: “On this (2nd Sunday of Lent), we hear the story of the Transfiguration. We remember how the Disciples, before they went to Jerusalem with Jesus to face his trials, had a glimpse of Christ in his true glory. Although the Transfiguration is celebrated as a feast on August 6th, it is the set Gospel reading for the 2nd Sunday of Lent in each year of the liturgical cycle. Lent is a good time for it too, as the glimpse of glory in Christ they saw on the mount of the Transfiguration was given in order to sustain the disciples on the journey with Christ towards Jerusalem, towards the events of Holy Week, and the darkness of Good Friday. Indeed, it is for a disciple, looking back at the transfiguration from Good Friday, that I have voiced this poem, Transfiguration: For that one moment, ‘in and out of time’, on that one mountain where all moments meet, the daily veil that covers the sublime, in darkling glass fell dazzled at his feet. There were no angels full of eyes and wings, just living glory full of truth and grace. The Love that dances at the heart of things, shone out upon us from a human face and to that light the light in us leaped up, we felt it quicken somewhere deep within, A sudden blaze of long-extinguished hope, trembled and tingled through the tender skin. Nor can this this blackened sky, this darkened scar, eclipse that glimpse of how things really are. Malcolm Guite, ‘Sounding the Seasons’: Sonnets for the Church Year