The Transfiguration

This is not a new thought but rather one that finds new realized meaning each time it comes back into play, which thank God is so frequent in my blessed life full of beautiful friends. Per usual, I gotta admit unoriginality and give props to my friend Jeremy who first introduced this thought to me back on Catholics on Call last August.

On Wednesday night of our week-long conference of Catholic awesomeness, we took a delightful little boat cruise out on Lake Michigan, eating some food, chatting on the decks, and hanging out at the tables. I had realized profoundly pretty early on that everyone there was similar on the basic level of feeling a genuine pull toward the Church and having a willingness to talk about it. I had uncharacteristically engaged a few great people and been rewarded with lush, fulfilling, beautiful conversations. So that night, the theme continued. As the cruise ended and we piled back into the cars to go back to CTU, we had a social time downstairs, but my buds Jeremy and Regina and I went and found a lounge and proceeded to just talk everything deep into the night.

The outline of what we covered is amazing, but the what is less important than the how. Building on that community that CoC enabled, there was a definite assent to vulnerability that happened tacitly. Without ice-breakers or assurances of confidentiality, we launched into sharing openly and comfortably. There wasn't fear beyond that which is natural and dismissed as petty; there wasn't concern over oversharing or undersharing but instead just free sharing.

The power of vulnerability to settle the heart, enable love to flow freely, and to build real relationship was so evident in the grace that night. This conversation in all its various beauty was the seminal part of a wonderful week that was legitimately a paradigm shift in my life and faith journey. I had been becoming more introspective and reflective and was seeking out these kind of conversations more, but not with the frequency or intensity that I do now and ever since then. It has become an internalized part of my spirituality and social life, that occasionally I push for too heavily but always find to be there just as I need it.

Jeremy put the best words to it at one point in the middle of it all. Describing in better words than I can recollect, Jeremy said that listening to us talk and hearing the kinds of stories of personal things we've shared, that we were transfigured before his eyes.

Honest, open, genuine sharing doesn't peel back the exterior of someone but informs others of the fuller person dwelling within. Knowing someone's stories, feelings, thought processes, spirituality, etc. causes you give them a fuller look when you see them--fuller than just moving past first-impression type reactions, fuller than judging their looks, fuller than remembering a time or two you had a fun time out with them, fuller than remembering a story they told you, fuller than having a nice chat over lunch.

Vulnerability is a gift we can give ourselves and others that transfigures the relationship--once you make yourself vulnerable to someone, you can never look at them the exact same, with your eyes or the eyes of your soul. There is a deeper appreciation that comes with the sight of someone after you have shared this kind of time or conversation with them.

Often when I make eye contact with a friend who I love dearly, I can only help but smile and laugh. Most friends will nervously ask, "What!?" [Many have learned to simply shake of my goofy love--right K-Jo?] And my only reply is nothing, because how do you describe the depth of the appreciation you can feel for someone with whom you've shared that vulnerability with?

It's a feeling that includes happiness but exceeds it to the depths of joy, which is the kind of deeper-set emotion that God calls us to, the type of feeling that indicates the profound goodness of what caused it. Joy denotes that what inspired it is good and right and probably linked to one's vocation. One of my favorite songs just came on iTunes (Only Living Boy in New York, Simon & Garfunkel, from Garden State) that sums up my goony habit: "I got nothing to do today but smile."