Transfiguration

Transfiguration Sunday, though it moves around on the calendar, is the day I mark the anniversary of my blog. And I can't mark it without posting. So--random Sunday observations.

Church began with "Love Divine, All Love Excelling," the hymn sung at my wedding, sung again at my husband's funeral. Kinda blindsided me this morning. I'm not sure I know what "changed from glory into glory" means, but I love to sing it, even if it makes me cry. Something to look forward to.

It's Oscar night in glorious Hollywood. It is the night in the year when I most miss Lon. We always watched the Oscars. It was a big night for someone who covered Entertainment. We watched together at home on the couch, or in the late 80's and early 90's by phone, because Lon was in his office at the SunTimes, taking phone calls from Roger Ebert who was dictating his front-page story from the bottom up. on the coast. Chaz must be missing Roger tonight.

This afternoon was taken up with a two-hour forum on hope for a just peace in Israel and Palestine. It was the culmination of many months of discussion and work by a committee I chaired. It was not a "balanced" presentation where people supporting opposite sides of the conflict face off in debate. The real problems are not going to be solved with a debate about right and wrong, or by measuring one side's injustice against the other's. People must be willing to put away fear and be courageous about doing justice. And not just in the Middle East. Right here in midwestern suburbia too.

And if that all sounds grand, or pretentious, or idealistic, or whatever, well, I've spent a long time on this. And I've arrived at a place, not where I shrug my shoulders and say it's difficult, but where I have convictions. And where I pray.

This blog has not been an especially lively place lately. Haven't posted since before Christmas. I've been sometimes lazy about writing, sometimes too busy with other writing, sometimes just out of words or reticent. This post, like so many before it is far more serious than I set out to be as the Perverse Lutheran.

More randomly: I'm watching the Oscars, and just wandered off to Twitter to see Ellen DeGeneres' selfie. Retweeted. But how petty that seems next to the happiness and beauty of the young woman from Twelve Years a Slave who just won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

I feel like a kid writing an essay for school (while watching TV). Have I met the word count yet?

Enough. The Perverse Lutheran, eight years old, more or less, today.