Into White

After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus.
Mark 9:2-4 NIV


Into White — Play it!
Track 8 on the album Tea for the Tillerman

I built my house from barley rice
Green pepper walls and water ice
Tables of paper wood,
windows of light
And everything emptying into white.

A simple garden, with acres of sky
A Brown-haired dogmouse
If one dropped by
Yellow Delanie would sleep well at night
With everything emptying into white.

A sad Blue eyed drummer rehearses outside
A Black spider dancing on top of his eye
Red legged chicken stands ready to strike
And everything emptying into white.

I built my house from barley rice
Green pepper walls and water ice
And everything emptying into white


Comment

I've always included this song in my spiritual Cat Stevens list, even though it is really only about living simply and purely. It's always reminded me of the Transfiguration of Jesus somehow. Something about the meaning of Christ's Transfiguration seems to relate to this song.

Christ wasn't transfigured by a special dispensation from the Father, so that His three closest followers could see it. No, Christ does nothing for show or for display. In actual fact, it was not Christ who was transfigured, but rather it was His disciples who were given the grace to see Him as He really is. It was not Christ "emptying into white," but rather His disciples.

A simple lifestyle and natural diet are not going to "empty us into white" as the three disciples were. Things don't work like that.

Think of the Great Fast before Pascha (Easter). Many think of the vegan diet that we partake of as a kind of punishment of the body, when in reality, as we are making the pilgrimage to Christ's life-giving death, to the new Tree of Life, the Cross, we are gradually "emptying into white," by the grace of God, by the privilege of simplicity in not only our diet but everything we do. Why? So that when we see Him hanging on the Cross, we will remember seeing Him on the mountain, transfigured, seeing Him as He always is.

We're waiting for the time when our eyes can look on that whiteness without blinking, when everything that is in us will be "emptying into white."