At Our Wits’ End

We are adrift in perplexing times.  My parents, stalwart Republicans to the core, would be aghast that a president of this nation would be cozying up to a former KGB killer running the Kremlin – especially a Republican!  That we would take his side over that of NATO.  That this president would believe the KGB guy over our own intelligence agencies.  That we would be adrift at sea with a would-be king.

Yes, after the Orange Felon put the kibosh on the Manhattan congestion pricing tolls, he posted a picture of himself sporting a golden crown with the words, “Long Live the King.”[1]

To which the governor responded that New Yorkers were under a king over 250 years ago and had to kill a lot of British soldiers to get rid of him; and we will not be bending the knee to one now.

Yes, in these disturbing times, what is the way forward?  Or are we just too numbed to contemplate anything more that the fetal position under the covers?

But revelation does come.  Maybe not on any mountain.  But if we are listening, there are moments of inspiration, especially in times of extremity – if we but wake up.  When we’re at our wit’s end – revelation.

When I was adrift, an academic disaster at Cal State Long Beach, I was lying out on the grass soaking up some rays, deep in distress.

Coming across the green was an old friend, Dan, who had been a fairly close friend in junior high.  We began catching up on news.  He was now an American history major.  I was a floundering geology major.  As a new transfer I had not made any friends yet.

Out of the blue, he asked me how was my love life.  “Nothing going on,” I responded.  I was lonely and despondent.

He suggested that I might want to attend the Methodist campus group, Wesley Foundation.  To which I replied that I had had it with the church – just a bunch of social climbing hypocrites. 

He said that there were some “mighty fine-looking women” who were part of the group.  “When do they meet?” I asked.

My life in those brief, shining moments was transfigured, exactly as Christ’s.

Revelation!  I was at my wits’ end – then my burning bush moment.  Bright and shining — transfiguration!  And I never looked back.

All true, such Spirit-filled revelation and transfiguration leads to God – transforming life-enhancing Torah values and Gospel goodness.  That’s certainly where mine led.  That’s where Jesus will lead.

The scene on the Mountain of Transfiguration is the culmination of Luke’s Sermon on the Plain – a restatement of the Beatitudes.

This passage from Luke for the last Sunday in Epiphany, Transfiguration Sunday, is a summing up of the teaching of Jesus, placing it in the Torah and prophetic fabric of Israel.  It is Moses and Elijah who join that assemblage on the Mount of Transfiguration and Revelation.

And of course, true to form, the disciples are completely dumbfounded.  Peter wants to enshrine the moment.

“Peter said to Jesus, ‘Master it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’ – not knowing what he said.”

That’s not the plan, not the point of the moment.  Certainly not Jesus’ plan.  As a cloud envelops them, there is that voice, the same sentiment spoken at Jesus’ baptism, “This is my Son, my Chosen,” with the add-on, “listen to him.”

Yes, Listen!

The mission is to come down off the mountain and enter the messy trials and suffering of those down below — Of us down below.  It is in those struggles — our struggles — that all shall be revealed.  Even on a cross.

I’ve been reading a memoir by a woman who came out of an evangelical expression of the faith.  An expression she now rejects.  After her experience with her diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and her suffering the effect of the condemning theology of that brand of Christianity, she broke free.  It’s a marvelous story of transfiguration as she frees herself from cult-like, destructive religion.[2]

Anna Gazmarian was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2011.  While the diagnosis provided an explanation of the mind-wrenching swings of depression and manic activity, it created real problems in her evangelical community.  The stigma attached by her church, interpreted theologically, condemned her as lacking faith, or worse, demon-possessed.

If she would just pray, read the Bible more, all would be okay.  The condition was her fault; the bromides of her “friends” were no better than those of Job’s “friends.”

“Always look on the bright side of life,” that was the theology of her mother and those in her church community.  If one only had a sufficiently strong faith, one could will cheerfulness.  To do otherwise was sin and rebellion against God.  The nostrum was more Bible reading and prayer.  Little thought that such severe depression was an organic disease of the brain.  Nothing to do with demons or Satan.

Anna writes, “For people living with bipolar disorder, a single thought can turn into obsession.  Racing thoughts become repetitive, sometimes moving from subject to subject, almost out of nowhere.  What stands out for those with bipolar disorder is that these thoughts are unceasing.  Every coping skill imaginable, like breathing[3] exercises or long walks, fails to provide an end.  You become trapped in your own mind.”[4]

It was only later that Anna recognized that her faith rested in the decision to get the real help she needed – a compassionate psychiatrist who understood and could treat her affliction.

After Anna is sufficiently stable, she decides to try college one more time.  She had already suffered through four attempts.  At Hope College, a more permissive Christian environment, she ends up in a poetry class.  Her guidance councilor felt this might be a good fit for Anna. 

This became a moment of transfiguration for Anna.  Sitting in the professor’s office, Anna announced that she wanted to become a poet. The professor, Dr. Glidsan saw through to Anna’s soul, to the true gifts in her writing. 

The professor threw her hands up in the air, exclaiming, “You already are one.  I think you should be a creative writing major.”[5]

Anna is not sure what the professor sees in her. 

“Dr. Glidsan placed her hand on her chin.  ‘You notice the small details,’ she said.  ‘You notice things that a lot of people miss or ignore.  Those details should be like the best whisky we keep on a shelf, only to bring out when people come over.  When you write your poems, you bring out those details.  That’s you.  That’s your vision.  I want you to write what only you can write.’”[6]

Anna sat there transfixed in a moment of pure Grace as she tried to keep the mascara from flowing down her cheeks.  Transfiguration – bright shining as of the Glory of God.  Right there in that professor’s office.

Days later, when Dr. Glidsan introduced the class to Elizabeth Bishop and her poem on loss, “One Art,” Anna came to another epiphany.   Losing as an art, is one that could be mastered.

Memories flooded in as Anna recalled all she had lost.  In her diagnosis she had lost her sense of self.  She’s lost her faith.  She’d lost her home.  She’s lost friends.  She’d lost her boyfriend Hunter.  She’d lost her belief in the world as a safe place.  So many losses.

She gasped as classmates turned to stare.  As one girl handed her a tissue, she knew something about loss.

In retrospect, Anna could see that her time at Hope was a beautiful moment of Grace.  Hope was different than what she had imagined college to be.  It didn’t quite fit the slick promotional brochures she had read.  Anna admits that her experience wasn’t “brochure-worthy, it was still meaningful, even beautiful.”  She continues, “moments of grace can be hard to come by, and even when they do come, the feeling can be fleeting…After years of searching, I was surprised to discover, in the eyes of my teacher and in the words of those poets, that I’d already been found.  That here were things only I could say.  That all the little details, the things that mattered most to me, might also matter to God.’”[7]

“In reading and writing poetry, I no longer needed to think of every bad thing in life, every loss, as being part of God’s plan.  Rather, I started to see my losses as things that could be named, honored, and, through art, brought into the present, transformed.”[8]

In the small poetry workshop groups of threes the professor set up, Anna found the freedom to share her struggles and hopes.  And there found an acceptance she had never felt in her faith communities.  Grace abounding!

She would later meet a young fellow who completely accepted her even with her mental health struggles.  This, all through a madcap adventure involving a garden gnome purchased on a lark at Walmart.  An improbable grace-filled journey leading to marriage and the birth of a son.  Read it.  It is nourishing soul food for Lent.  Such is how Easter arrives.

Transfiguration can be a sudden change or it can creep up on one as if on little cat’s feet.

What we celebrate through this season of Epiphany is the transfiguration of the Church from the timidity of cowering in an upper room into a bold, prophetic expression of God’s will for us all.  A kin-dom that binds us together.  “In Christ there is no north or south, no east or west” – all brothers, sisters we.  And in the Together is God.  We, like Christ on the Mountain of Revelation, like a chance occasion on a college campus green, like an appointment at a professor’s office — Transfiguration!  Amen.

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[1] Benjamin Oreskes, “‘Long Live the King’: Trump Likens Himself to Royalty on Truth Social,” New York Times, February 20, 2025.

[2] Anna Gazmarian, Devout: A Memoir of Doubt (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2024).

[3] Op cit., 34.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Op cit. 82

[6] Op cit.

[7] Op cit., 83-84.

[8] Op cit., 85.

March 2, 2025
Last Sunday after Epiphany
Transfiguration Sunday


Exodus 24:29-35; Psalm 99;
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-36

“At Our Wits’ End”