I met with my spiritual director a couple of weeks ago, and she offered a thought for me to meditate on. I’ve been doing that, and found it very provocative…

She began by saying she’d read my most recent reflection for the spiritual direction formation course. In it I wrote about the idea that the transfiguration isn’t about a change in Jesus – it is a revealing of Jesus’s true nature to the disciples there. Their vision is clarified. The process of divinisation (or theosis) in the life of the believer is also a progressive journey to participating in the truth of who we are and what we are called to be (divine, but in a different sense to the divinity of God). My director’s thought was that perhaps I could meditate on the idea that I, and my sisters and brothers who are different and therefore discriminated against by the church, stand with Jesus. Our real nature isn’t seen because of the scales on the eyes of those who look.

My other spiritual direction thought came out of the final formation session for the year. During the praxis session, during my direction, our mentor and several other people said they had a sense of my gaze and presence being Jesus’s gaze and presence. This was very confronting and unsettling for me, because during the early part of the formation course I found the idea of the director as an icon of Jesus wonderful, but beyond me. I know that I’m sinful, broken, and fall far short of the ideals of the director that Kallistos Ware describes. So how can this be me? I guess the answer is that it isn’t. This is the work of God in me. And I don’t feel equal to the challenge!