Changing Form
I hope you look different this week, babes, because you’ve been with people who love women and justice. I hope you are different this week, beauties, because you’ve encountered goodness and love.
It will never not be a gift to get to write women’s stories and share them with others.
It will never not be a gift to get to invite people into the transformative and healing power of women.
It will never not be a gift to unabashedly center and celebrate women.
It will never not be a gift to get to use my imagination to reorder the world.
It will never not be a gift to join friends in their communities to talk about women in our sacred scriptures.
These are some of the thoughts I’m having this morning after being on the road this past week for book events in Georgia and Alabama.
As people continue to live in fear because of I*E, as sick men who raped and abused children for years continue to walk free, as the world simmers and burns, I got to share a few sacred moments this past week with beautiful, ordinary people who care deeply about reimagining our faith with women at the center.
I got to laugh with friends.
I got to sign books–Be a woman who womans. (When you read In the Beginning Were the Women you’ll understand what this means.) You are blessed and beautiful. Love, Claire
I got to see, firsthand, the Holy One’s holy people longing for love and justice, kindness and mercy to reign.
And while my experiences last week are, unfortunately, not an antidote to injustice, they are and forever will be a buoy that keeps me afloat. I like to think they just might be a buoy that keeps all of us afloat.
Isn’t this why we keep showing up in community spaces? Church services. Book clubs. Mahjong groups. Girl dinners. Basketball games. Wine tastings. Food pantries. Protest rallies.
Isn’t this why we continue, against all odds, working together for a kinder, more just world for everybody?
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In the Revised Common Lectionary, which is a standardized, three-year cycle of Bible readings used by most mainline Protestant churches in the U.S. and Canada to guide Sunday worship, today is Transfiguration Sunday. It is the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the Lenten season, which will lead us to Easter.
On Transfiguration Sunday, many of us celebrate the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, the manifestation as the fulfillment of the law and prophets. While I remain uncertain what I think, feel, and believe about the “transfiguration,” I cannot ignore that the very word, transfiguration, means to change figure or form. To look different, to be different after encountering the presence and love of God.
Thus, my hope, after this week of being in the presence and love of God because I got to be with beautiful people who embody God’s very presence and love, is that somehow, some way I am changed because of it. That somehow, some way all of us are changed when we get together, center and celebrate women, fight for justice, and keep the flame of love burning.
My hope, my prayer is that I am different because of being with God’s people. My hope, my prayer, is that you are different, too, because you’ve spent time with God’s beloved both loving and being loved. My hope, my prayer is that in the midst of madness, we come together in every way we can to change form for the sake of the world God so loves.
I hope you look different this week, babes, because you’ve been with people who love women and justice. I hope you are different this week, beauties, because you’ve encountered the goodness and love of God.
Amen.
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Thanks to First Presbyterian Church of Athens, GA and Auburn UMC for inviting me to share my books, women’s stories, and my heart with you last week! It was a true delight to be with you. Thanks, too, to Avid Bookshop and Auburn Oil Co. Booksellers for selling my books.
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