I love old china plates and patterns.
So does Susan, my wife.
We both come from families with generations of accumulated, and mixed china patterns.
Full sets, partial sets, small sets, single pieces.
The bottom line, our house has stacks and stacks of china, filling the place up.
They are beautiful, the patterns that endure, that are used again and again, hallowed by use.
They make me stop. They make me pay attention, to colors, shapes, weight, touch, to memory and stories.
We wash them by hand.
The inevitable happens. A slip, grasping and juggling as the plate starts to tumble through the air. It always happens in slow motion.
I can see the plate now as it slowly falls to the hard floor, whole, beautiful intact one instant, and in the next instant there is that loud percussive, abrasive crash as it shatters, the shards spinning, dancing, scattering in every direction. Then the silence. Then the skip of the heartbeat. Watery suds dripping from fingers to the floor. The withering posture of grief.
A beautiful thing, shattered and scattered.
Our attentions are like that. A beautiful thing, scattered and shattered.
Broken attention. Scattered attention pulled in every direction.
We miss so much. We get so much wrong. There is so much competition trying to catch our attentions, entire industries and political systems all designed to do one thing, to get our attention, to hold our attention, to bend, to shape, to misdirect our attentions, to bait and switch when we aren’t looking.
What does it take to get our attention?
What do we do to get attention? To avoid attention?
We always have plates and cups that are glued back together, or are waiting in a pile to be glued back together, a whole procession of piles of pieces, peacefully waiting, “One of these days, when I get around to it.”
But it rarely works. They look and feel misshapen afterwards. Traumatized.
Sometimes we just can’t see or hear each other, our attentions are spinning and falling and shattering faster than we can juggle and catch them, faster than we can glue things back together in distorted shapes.
The Transfiguration of Jesus.
I think we can rename this beloved visionary bible story.
We can call it, “Do I have your attention yet!”, as God smashes the china to the floor.
It is a deep, and mysterious and very straight forward story.
Our attentions are grabbed.
Pay close attention to Jesus. That’s the whole message, shining like the sun.
We see the brightness of God, the brightness of the kingdom of heaven, the brightness leaks out, the brightness of the resurrection, and the brightness of the one who will return and be our judge.
The brightness that brings all the pieces of this shattered beauty back together.
“Now that I have your full attention we can go back down the mountain and carry the cross that will shatter this body.” There it is. The whole story. There is nothing else. There is only Jesus himself alone. Soon to be shattered, the pieces scattering in every direction. The image broken.
The brightness of God, that will be shattered, that all these broken pieces may be made whole.
The brightness that touches us in our fear, commanding us to get up, to rise, to not be afraid.
Don’t be afraid of being shattered.
It’s all coming together.
So here we are in our scattered lives, our distracted and misdirected attentions.
What breaks us?
What pulls us back together?
And then every once in a while, that brightness breaks through.
What does it take to get our attention?