Letter from Amy: February 11, 2026

Hiking in the Italian Alps last summer

Dear Incarnation,

This Sunday is Transfiguration Sunday, the final Sunday before the season of Lent. Our scriptures tell mysterious, evocative stories of mountain traverses, radiant light, descending clouds, and a divine voice. These are stories of heaven meeting earth; God’s divine life breaking into our creaturely life and our material world.

It’s also an Acapella Sunday, when we’ll particularly attune our ears to the simplicity and power of voice. And it's another Baptism Sunday, when we will welcome baby Ronen to the family of God. Baptism, too, is a heaven-meeting-earth moment, as God transfigures ordinary water on human skin to bring our creaturely lives into his divine life. I am grateful for these embodied ways we will enter the mystery and wonder of Jesus’ transfiguration.

The imagery of traversing mountains carries fresh meaning for me this year as I contemplate the transfiguration story. During my sabbatical last summer (thank you again, Incarnation!), my family hiked many mountains and hills throughout Europe. We saw radiant light reflected in high alpine lakes and descending clouds laden with snow. It was such a wondrous, beautiful time, and I came home with a trove of stories and experiences.

But I also came home to a very busy church in a season of transition. We’d unexpectedly moved to a new building just weeks before my sabbatical; we changed our service time (for the 3rd time that year) on my first Sunday back; and within a few months, we were planting Holy Comforter. My trove of sabbatical stories was pushed to the back of the closet for very good and necessary reasons.

But over coffee and pie last December, Tom Schultz and Buz Schultz urged me to pull it out again and share some of those stories with the congregation. I am grateful for their nudge, and for their hosting of this Friday’s event. And I am excited to unpack the treasure trove with you! I hope this time will offer a respite of joy, laughter, and beauty in the midst of the overwhelm of our world.

Please join us! This Friday, Feb 13, at 7:30pm at Tom’s house in Annandale (3419 Surrey Ln, Falls Church, VA 22042). RSVP to Tom so we know how many to expect: thomas-schultz@hotmail.com.

There’s a lot happening in our world. Please reach out if you would like to talk or pray about anything that’s on your mind; I love hearing from you. Or consider dropping into our final Evening Prayer session, tonight on Zoom at 8pm: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81887389372

with love,

Amy

p.s. I loved the poetic rendering of Psalm 67 that TJ shared at the conclusion of his sermon on Sunday (from Macolm Guite’s wonderful book of psalm-sonnets, David’s Crown). It’s a fitting anticipation of Transfiguration Sunday, when we will “seek his face / whose every look is light”:

Psalm 67

Till love himself comes as a revelation

We’ll live on mercy, and we’ll seek his face

Whose every look is light. In every nation

He is acknowledged, and all peoples trace

The shimmer of his presence, seek to follow

The hints and glimmers of his fleeting grace,

Feel after him and find him, learn to hallow

The places where the veil seems very thin:

The forest grove at sunrise or the hollow

In the hills on autumn evenings when

We seem to hear the horns of Eland blowing

And strange unearthly longings draw us in.

Then we come close to God without our knowing,

As he approaches us with wordless blessing,

And Eden’s rivers here on earth are flowing.