A Necessary Light: Notes on Transfiguration, Trauma, and Alaska

After two years of mulling over this Feast, here's what I’m left with...

In honour of yesterday’s leavetaking of the Feast of the Transfiguration, I’m sharing an essay I’ve been working on about the new meanings that Feast has accumulated over the years. Enjoy!

Was the Transfiguration really necessary?

That question came up one sweltering August evening two years ago, sitting on my friend Dan’s (

Later on Sunday

) back patio with his wife and my now-husband. It was the Feast of the Transfiguration—August 6—and we were sharing cold beers in the thick heat.

Dan lit up sharing how much he loves this Feast. It was, he said, maybe one of his favourites of the Christian year. His enthusiasm caught me off guard. The Transfiguration had always struck me as… just… fine. A face shining like the sun? Dead prophets showing up for a chat? Weird flex on God’s part, but okay.

Compared to the Incarnation or the Annunciation, the Transfiguration just didn’t seem to carry the same weight for the salvation story. I’d never understood why it was one of the twelve major feasts.

When I told Dan all this, he pushed back. The discussion got heated—not in tone, but in temperature. (It was, after all, a humid 30°C with no breeze.) I can’t recall every detail of our arguments, so this morning I texted him to jog my memory.

“I’m not sure exactly what I said in the original convo,” he wrote, “but for me, the feast is a big deal because it marks such a profound signification of God’s breaking into the world. Without the Transfiguration I’m not sure that it would ever have been clear to the apostles and thus the Church that Christ is divine. There have been many prophets and kings.”

What has stayed with me in the years since our conversation wasn’t his reasoning or any particular detail he mentioned at the time, but the way he spoke about the Transfiguration—with a fondness some reserve for a favourite novel or their first car. This wasn’t abstract theology for him, it was personal.

Something about his enthusiasm left me wondering if I wasn’t missing out on something—not simply intellectually, but personally.

My friend Dan talks about the Transfiguration like some talk about a favourite novel or their first car. This isn’t abstract theology for him, it’s personal. Dan, if you are reading this: I am sorry for such an old picture of us but every other one I have is full of other people.

A second text came through this morning: “It’s the feast of revealing. The feast of opening our eyes to what can never be fully articulated. The feast of Light—so central to Orthodox faith.”

But two years ago, when we first had this conversation, my eyes were still closed. Maybe they still are. But in the years since, they have opened—just a little—to the light of this feast.

We’ll get there. Slowly.

THIS YEAR, I spent Transfiguration in Alaska.

I was there to speak at the annual Eagle River Institute, hosted by St. John’s Cathedral (Antiochian Archdiocese). The five-day event brings Orthodox thinkers and laypeople together to explore topics of importance to everyday Orthodox life. My talks—“Remembering All These Things”: Trauma and Healing as Mystery—wove together therapeutic understandings of trauma, practical steps toward trauma-informed ministry, and an Orthodox theology of healing rooted in liturgical life.

Alaska is unlike any place I’ve ever been. From the remoteness, to the stoic mountains standing watch over it all—never entirely out of view—to the clashing synergies of wilderness and humanity, beauty and chaos, indigenous and colonial legacies… It would take more time than I had to fully take in this place.

On my fourth or fifth night there though, I did realize something unnerving: it never seemed to get dark. Although Eagle River is too far south of the Arctic Circle for a true midnight sun, in summer, even when the sun slips below the horizon, it lingers close enough that it is functionally daylight. Night just never seemed to come as long as I was there. Not at 10 p.m., walking back to my lodging after lingering dinners with my hosts. Not at 4 a.m., waking in a jet-lagged stupour. Not at Vespers, not at Matins.

In the Bible, light orients, enlivens, reveals, illumines. In Alaska—at least to my eyes, accustomed to darker climes (and lacking the sunglasses I’d forgotten on my kitchen table in my early morning dash to the airport)—it often did the opposite. The subarctic light was fatiguing, glaring, occasionally obscuring. It disoriented me in time as much as in place.

In summer’s unbroken light, everything lay perpetually revealed. And yet, beneath that constant illumination, this mysterious land seemed to guard a depth I couldn’t quite fathom.

Eagle River, AK (St. John’s Cathedral) - Me, for reasons unknown, pointing very emphatically at my brain during one of my talks. Icon of the Transfiguration on the wall beside me. Photo by Fr. Marc Dunaway.

TRAUMA IS ONE OF THOSE WORDS we casually throw around without indicating what we mean. So in Alaska, as in most of my talks, I began by offering a working definition:

“Trauma is any event or series of events that a person experiences as too much, too little, too fast, or too soon to process.”¹

Too much, too little, too fast, too soon… Even if we’ve never faced a major life-rupturing event, most of us can recognize these categories in our own stories.

Like a camera, we all have an inner aperture—an emotional and physiological range of capacity to “let in” certain degrees of experience or keep them out. When life forces us to take in more than that aperture can accomodate, our ability to clearly perceive and integrate that experience breaks down. In photography, this leads to over-exposure—an image drowned in light.

In trauma, this kind of overexposure leads to the flooding of mental and emotional systems that regulate how we perceive, process, and remember events. These experiences get stored differently in our minds and body, and when activated, can seem more immediate or distressing than other memories. When we recall them, suddenly our body reacts as though that experience were happening all over again—a racing pulse, sweaty palms, compulsion to flee the room. We likely know where we are in realtime—but in our bodies, we are two years old again, waiting for the scary man to leave so we can come out of hiding.

☙

IN ST. GREGORY’S LIFE OF MACRINA, there’s a moment that gives me goosebumps no matter how many times I read or share it—the story of her hidden scar, which Gregory first encounters only as he is preparing her body for burial.

“Do not let this miracle pass by unnoticed,” the nun Vestiana tells St. Gregory, pointing to a mark above Macrina’s breast—the only trace left from a tumour God healed many years earlier. The tumour vanished, but the scar remained as a sign of God’s healing work, and she kept it concealed her entire life out of modesty.

It seems we’re all carrying something, even—perhaps especially—the saints. The scars of this life can disfigure, or, in the sacred alchemy of God’s glory and our willing self-offering, transfigure.

The Alaskans nod vigorously—more vigorously, it seems to me, than any of my previous audiences have when I’ve unveiled the jet lag analogy. … These are people who, maybe more than most, know what it means to be pulled between times, between spaces and states, between mind and body.

“I WOKE UP AT 4 AM this morning,” I tell the Alaska crowd during my first talk. “My body is still stuck on Eastern Time.”

When it comes to trauma, why can’t our rational mind simply tell the body to stop reacting to old memories as if they’re still happening? The physiological answer involves technical terms and brain structures that would make most audiences’ eyes glaze over. So instead, I usually turn to a more everyday experience—jet lag. It’s an imperfect parallel, but one I can pull off well, since I’m almost always a little discombobulated when speaking in a new place.

Like the imprint of trauma, in jet lag our mind and body can be operating in different time zones. Telling a weary traveler to look at the clock—that is, just rationally think your way into the present—won’t do anything for them. It’s just as unhelpful to tell a trauma survivor to “leave the past behind” when they’re struggling with the intrusive memories and sensations that occasionally press in on them from old wounds.

Jet lag fades with time, and sunlight, and contact with the normal rhythms of the new time zone—we come to embody a new present.

Likewise, the therapeutic modalities most effective in helping people after trauma tend to have some kind of somatic (body-oriented) component. Approaches like EMDR, somatic experiencing, or those based in polyvagal theory give the body time, space, and safety to “catch up” to what is here and now.

“We all, each of us, carry multiple time zones within ourselves,” I tell the Alaska crowd. “So often in life, we encounter experiences where we must work patiently with our minds, bodies, and souls, so they can learn to come together and unite with Christ in the ‘present’ of our experiences.”

The Alaskans nod vigorously—more vigorously, it seems to me, than any of my previous audiences have when I’ve unveiled the jet lag analogy. These are people who, to get to any other state in their own country, must sit for hours on a plane. Who live on Alaska Time—a time zone I didn't even realize existed until just a few months ago, a literal “time outside of time,” or at least outside contiguous US time.

In short, these are people who, maybe more than most, know what it means to be pulled between times, between spaces and states, between mind and body.

If we mistake “bearing our cross” for being a passive receptacle for the cruelty of others, we risk enduring a suffering that destroys rather than transforms. This kind of wound acts on the soul like acid, hollowing us into moral zombies—shells of persons who may look outwardly patient and enduring but inwardly have simply given up. I have seen this. I have lived it. It is a terrible way to live, and it is the opposite of redemption.

My ambivalent journey with the Transfiguration continued after my conversation with Dan.

Last year, my priest assigned me to help chant on the eve of the Feast itself, or the Sunday following—I don’t remember which. Regardless, it required reviewing the readings and hymns for the Transfiguration.

I was already pretty familiar with the Troparion. Over the years, through sheer repetition, I have unwittingly memorized it—somehow even in Greek—along with those for many other major feasts.

But I was less familiar with the slightly longer Kontakion:

On the Mountain You were Transfigured, O Christ God,
and Your disciples beheld Your glory **as far as they could bear it;**
so that when they would behold You crucified,
they would **understand that Your suffering was voluntary,**
and would proclaim to the world,
that You are truly the Radiance of the Father!

(Source: OCA.org; emphasis mine)

I must have heard and even sung these words many times before. But as I sat with them anew—this time in silence, in preparation—I wondered if I’d ever truly “heard” them before.

What struck me now was how closely the language of this hymn aligns with what is needed to heal from experiences of trauma, particularly for those of us who, as part of our healing, must find a way to reconcile the ways we have been broken with a God who is supposedly good and loving.

Trauma—and the many experiences that tend to evoke it, such as abuse, assault, and cruelty—often forces people into suffering without their will or consent. We learn to regard the world as a dangerous place, and God—as its sovereign—as the One who demands too much of us, casting us to the lions of abuse or suffering with seemingly no regard for our preciousness.

This can impoverish our understanding of what the Cross of Christ, and with it the call to bear our own, is. If we mistake “bearing our cross” for being a passive receptacle for the cruelty of others, we risk enduring a suffering that destroys rather than transforms. This kind of wound acts on the soul like acid, hollowing us into moral zombies—shells of persons who may look outwardly patient and enduring but inwardly have simply given up.² I have seen this. I have lived it. It is a terrible way to live, and it is the opposite of redemption.

This is what I thought about as I first read the Kontakion in this newness of light.

I thought about how, even in the Transfiguration, Christ did not reveal His glory to a point that overwhelmed, manipulate, or destroy what was most vulnerable in His disciples. He only revealed His glory as far as they could bear to see it, and understand the majesty of His Good News.

I thought about how the purpose of this Self-revelation was not to flex His mighty God-muscles nor to blind a feeble humanity into submission. He was transfigured to prepare us (not Him) for the Cross. To help us recognize in this harrowing thing that was coming the mysterious outline of voluntary suffering. A God whose face rivals the light of the sun, whose clothing glows with a white suggestive of colours no human eye can behold, whose words can summon the dead, whose Father’s voice can be heard from the heavens—a God like this does not simply end up on a Cross. He chooses it. And He chose it for us.

“The path is steep, the shale crumbling beneath our feet, but the view is worth it.”

“I have an annual tradition,” Fr. Marc, the priest in Alaska, tells me.

It is my last day before flying home later that night (whatever that means in a place where the sun doesn’t properly rest). It is also August 6, the Feast of the Transfiguration. We’ve already had Liturgy, and now have a few hours to spare before I pack and leave.

“Every year on the Feast of the Transfiguration, my wife and I bring a group to climb the mountain at Hatcher Pass.”

Even though we drive most of the way up, the rest of the mountain still stretches overhead like a sentinel.

Once on the path, we follow the switchbacks back and forth, higher and higher. I move with the rapidity of a manic rabbit—if I slow my pace, I will look down too quickly and my legs will begin to wobble. After fifteen or twenty minutes, we arrive at a lookout, a sort of saddle in the mountains dotted by several glacial pools. Fr. Marc waits here while I walk another thousand feet up to a peak with Christine, who has been running the guest house with her husband during my stay.

The path is steep, the shale crumbling beneath our feet, but the view is worth it.

At the top, the world stretches below us, silent except for the rushing wind.

There’s just something about a mountaintop, I think to myself. Quite possibly the most overused metaphor in human history—and yet, when you’re actually on a mountain, the sun a gleaming diamond in the high-altitude sky and the world spilling out below—you realize some metaphors can never be mined bare. It’s not just the views, it’s what is unveiled through them. It’s the way the layers of the ordinary world are pealed away, and you see what was there all along: the majesty, the light, the nearness of God, the smallness of us. He could have revealed His glory anywhere—the desert, a garden, the Temple—each would have added its own symbolic layer to the Transfiguration.

But no wonder He chose a mountain.

Video caption: The view at 4600 feet (according to Strava).

☙

So, was the Transfiguration necessary?

I used to think not—at least not for God, who could have saved us without the mountain or all the holy pyrotechnics. Dan argued it was necessary for us—for the disciples, for the Church—and I’ll grant him that. And lately, I’m slowly realizing it’s an important event for at least one other person: me. Like Dan, I’m starting to find a personal joy or comfort in this once weird, now wonderful “flex” on God’s part. There are things about Christ—some I’ve tried, however imperfectly, to name here—that I only glimpse through the Transfiguration. And if it’s necessary for me, and for all of us, then maybe it’s necessary for God too. If He loves us and crafted creation so as to offer the possibility of that love being something that could be shared—offered and received in mutual freedom—then I guess we can’t think of the Transfiguration as an optional flourish. It has to be part of salvation itself.

Still, maybe “necessary” is the wrong question. Salvation itself wasn’t necessary in any strict sense—God could have left us to spin on in our darkness. Neither are mountains necessary for the earth to keep turning and sustaining life. If we press the “necessary” questions too hard, we risk paring existence down to an impoverished list of biological facts, and even those depend on mysteries and causes and reasons we often can’t explain.

So after two years of mulling over this Feast, what I’m left with is this: some of the truest and most important events are given to us not because we need them (or asked, or wanted them), but—plain and simply—because we are cared for. Because we are free—or are meant to be free, and sometimes, need help recognizing that freedom.

And, because we are loved.

WE DON’T STAY on Hatchers Pass very long, though the beauty is tempting. Too soon, it’s back to level ground, back to catch a plan, back to my real life in Canada.

Hours later, I’m given a window seat on the plane. As we rise, the city of Anchorage slips away beneath us, but the mountains remain, keeping vigil beside our ascent. I’m about to close my window as we start passing through the clouds when I realize the show’s not over yet. The highest peaks pierce the misty floor, their crowns glinting in the (nighttime?) sun. And hovering far above them, luminous and brooding, unmoving even as we hurry past, stands Denali—the tallest mountain in North America. It feels less like seeing and more like being seen, as if the mountain has been there all along, waiting. Even from hundreds of miles away, even encased in this soaring bullet of human ingenuity, it’s enough to make me tremble.

It is good to tremble in the light of a loving God.∎

Pictures from the plane or it didn’t happen! Denali, the highest point in North America, can be seen in the lower left-hand image (in that image it’s the peak on the left). To get a sense of its sheer immensity, keep in mind that the lower level of terrain below it is not the ground—that is clouds and mountains. Really mountains, too, not wimpy ones.

1. Based on a definition shared by Duros & Crowley, “The Body comes to Therapy too,” Clinical Social Work Journal, 2014, 42(3): 238.

2. Cf. Bishop Kallistos Ware, “The Seed of the Church: Martyrdom as a Universal Vocation,” in The Inner Kingdom: Volume 1 of the Collected Works (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000), 111-126, here p. 116.