Collect the Right Memories

This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.
Listen to Him.

You know, every Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving,
we gather around the table with family and friends
for a festive occasion.
It takes weeks of anticipation and even weeks of preparation.
We enjoy a wonderful moment when we gather,
not so much the food,
but what is all around that,
all the family and friends gathering together
to celebrate the occasion.
They are really sacred moments.
This is holy ground.

 And yet here is what is strange.
There are many of us who will remember
not the festivity of those events,
but rather we remember that one tiny comment
somebody from the in-laws said,
some comment made sideways
or some passing comment by Uncle Joe.
It is minutes in the whole day of celebration,
and yet that is the one minute we hold on to.

 A slight that you took
and yet no one else saw it or even heard it,
but that is what we hold on to.
We hold on to it and we treasure it
like it is some golden treasure
and we bring it up and shine it up.
"Look at what happened.
Did you hear what she said?
Again, again, look at what she said.
Can you believe he did that?
That is the third Christmas in a row."
We can feel the energy
and we hold up these memories
as if that was the occasion.

We realize that so much more happened
and yet we select this one tiny minute,
maybe two minutes,
and that is what we choose to remember.

See, it is our choice.
And when we choose that,
we choose what will damage us
and damage the relationships.
It does not change that they said something silly
or something hurtful.
Why has that happened?
Because they did say something hurtful.
It was quite painful at that moment.
But instead of letting it go,
we hold on to it
and we dredge up that memory
and shine it like gold, like some treasure.
What a dreadful mistake to make,
and yet here we do it time and time again.

 You see, the challenge for us
is that we have these mountaintop experiences
that happen throughout the year.
And there are valleys.
Of course, there are valleys.
Where there is a mountain, there is a valley.
That is the nature of human life for us.
So surely, we will have these moments.
Somebody will say something silly or goofy or hurtful.
No question.
But if we choose to live in the valley,
then why would we be surprised
if all we get is darkness?
You see, we have got to learn
to remember the mountaintops of our experiences
and to tell that story
so that we can get through the valleys, the darkness.

 In today’s reading, we hear this beautiful passage
of the transfiguration of Jesus on the top of a mountain.
He takes Peter, James, and John, the brother.
Now, bear in mind,
the context for this is He knows what He is going to face.
He knows He is going to the cross.
He knows He is going to die.
He has already told them that,
but it is too much for them to hear.

And so what does He do?
He gives them a mountaintop experience
because He knows the valley is coming for them,
and it is going to be a dark valley.
He gives them this, and He reminds them,
He says, do not tell anybody
until I have been raised from the dead.
Until you see the fullness of this mountaintop experience
and then remember it.
He said, then shine that memory to others.
That is what He is calling them to do.

 We hear the same story in Genesis
about Abraham being called to his ministry,
and he is given this huge vision
of what his future is going to be.
Again, another mountaintop experience
to give him the strength, the vision
to withstand the valleys.
You see, we are called to do that in our own life.

 We are called to take the mountaintop experiences of life,
and we are called to remember them
and not to focus on the valleys.
That is a choice you and I have.
Now, it is not just a big mountaintop experience
as Christmas and Easter and Thanksgiving feast
or any other birthday celebration.

 They are the big ones,
no question they are mountaintops,
but there are lots of hilltops
that we get each and every day.
The same thing happens on a small cycle
in our day to day lives.
They are hilltops and smaller valleys,
but we can do the exact same.
We fall into the exact same trap.
We focus on what is not right.
In fact, Silicon Valley is built on that.

 Identify the problem so we can build a company.
That is what we do.
We see the problem so we identify it,
and so we tend to focus on that that is not working.
It is a great thing, it is a creativity,
but it tends to keep us down into the valley a lot.
And we have got to find a way
to come back out of the valley, those hilltops,
and name the experiences in every day
that we can lift ourselves up
and allow the Lord to guide us
into and through the darkness of the valley
into another place.

 What does that look like?
How do we do that?
You have heard me say it a thousand times,
and it is a a well-known secret at this point.
It has to be prayer.
We have to find a way to pause and reflect
each and every day on the moments because they pass.
These grace moments, these sacred moments,
this holy grounding happens every single day.

 Now, they are not mountaintops necessarily,
but they are hilltop experiences.
But we have to name them and remember them
and not collect the wrong memories
because whatever we remember,
whatever stories we tell ourselves,
that is the story and the memory that we live.
That is what we need to understand, right?

 How are we to do that?
Well, Saint Ignatius came up with a way.
He called it the examen.
You have heard me talk about it many times,
but I suspect many of you
have not started the practice.
And the practice is quite simple.
You start with naming God’s grace.
You ask Him at the end of the day
to name the three hilltop experiences of the day,
to name what they are
so that you can see God’s grace
in the midst of your every day.
And then you acknowledge one of the valleys.

But only one because where there are hills,
there are valleys
and if we name more than one,
we tend to overwhelm ourselves.
We remember that that is what we are wired for,
the problems, right?
We are wired for the valleys.
We have to name these hilltops.
What do they look like?

They can be something simple
like sharing a meal with your spouse,
an ordinary meal,
the beauty of a simple meal made by loving hands.
Have a glass of wine and a wonderful conversation
over an ordinary meal
and cherish that as a grace and holy moment.
Or when your child comes in from school
all excited about something that happened,
just sit and listen
and acknowledge this as a grace moment,
holy ground right here in front of you.

Or if you look out on the beauty of our world,
we live in such a beautiful place.
The mountains are shining
in the end of February, now March.
This is winter in California!
And the trees and the beauty of a flower
or a bird singing.

 Let the moments not pass you by.
You have to collect them
because they are happening every single day.
And if you can learn to name them,
then that will transform you.
I promise you, it will transfigure you.
If you do it over day after day after day,
you will become, you will shine like the sun,
just like Jesus did.

And why?
Because I know that is what you can do.
That is what the Lord does.
That is the joy of the gospel.
When you start to name the hilltop experiences,
then guess what?
You start to live the hilltop experiences.
And you say, it cannot be that simple.
It is that simple. It is.
And that is what the Lord promises us,
that He promises us if we listen to Him,
if we listen to Him in our day,
you will notice Him in different ways.

  Then it will bring joy to your life.
Now, one of the ways in which I do this every night
is I write it down in the journal
because I want to put it down to memory.
I want to commit it to memory.
And so I force myself at the end of every day,
regardless how busy my day is,
I sit down and I write down
the three hilltop experiences that I have had that day.
And there is usually far more than three.
I cannot write fast enough.

 Because you see, there are valleys,
but there are far more hilltops.
And on an occasional mountaintop,
a conversation that changed your life,
a gentle touch that was not just an ordinary touch.
It was a loving touch that at that moment,
in that particular painful moment,
was a mountaintop experience.

 So let us seize the moment,
capture the memory and hold on to it.
Let it transfigure us.
The Lord from the clouds said to the disciples,

This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.
Listen to Him.