We are all very attracted to stories of people changing, maybe especially when they change dramatically. Even when these stories are pretty unlikely, like a well-known celebrity seen carrying a Bible into prison when previously it had seemed unlikely she had seen any book before in her life, much less a Bible, even those stories we’re suspicious about attract our attention. Because in our hearts we would like to believe that people can change, that people can find new directions and act on them. We might be cynical about it, but we want to believe. This gospel today is a story of Jesus suddenly changing, his transfiguration, we call it…

There’s a wonderful novel that just came out called Lying Awake. It’s about a cloistered nun in California, who has visions, ecstatic religious visions, visions so intense that she has begun to write poetry about them. But she also has fierce headaches that attack her painfully, and seizures that leave her exhausted for days, and that are getting worse. She eventually consults a doctor, outside the cloister, who finds that she has temporal lobe epilepsy, and that an operation can cure her headaches and seizures, but it may also cure her of her visions. So she has a choice: She can stay in touch with what she believes is her…