Transforming moments are all around us -- during walks to Emmaus, on mountaintops, and while cooking. We reflect on some of these astonishing and quotidian moments.

Many of us have had transforming moments that bring smiles to our imagination when we remember these special moments: many little moments of serendipity, or some moments of life-changing events.

Probably a classic transformation moment is told in Scripture when disciples walking to Emmaus, then seated at table, recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread. “Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him.” Astonishingly they asked, “Were not our hearts burning within us?” (Luke 24:13-35)

Unlike the walk to Emmaus, in 1971, I was hiking up a mountain jutting from a Colorado ranch where I was staying. Just passing up beyond the timber line, I sat on a rock to rest and enjoy my picnic lunch at a beautiful alpine meadow. Silence, peaceful solitude. Surreal clear blue sky. At that moment a tiny brown bird glided by, then perched on the rock beside me. “How did you get up here?” I asked in my imagination before refusing the effort to explain it. My eyes were opened to the beauty of creation and life, a sense that has never left me.

In a contrasting scenario, recently while I was watching the movie, “A Man Called Otto,” I was struck at how miserable this grumpy widower was. It appeared that “O-T-T-O” needed a transformation. What would it take? A cat? Gravestone? Baby? I’m not a spoiler. Just sayin’, he needed a transformation.

I left both the movie and the alpine meadow with a smile in my imagination. I imagine that grace conquers all. You know it when your heart is burning within. To quote a wise observation from my friend, Emilie: “You can’t walk outside without bumping into God – if you recognize God.”

In a moving, lyrical essay entitled, “Testimony,” Brenton MacKinnon shares memories of his time as a Marine in Vietnam, and of his later conversations in New York with Vinh, his Vietnamese immigrant friend.

At one point, Vinh tells him, “The flow of generations moves through us, joined forever to the past and to the future of our own children.” Vinh continues by telling MacKinnon that anyone in the family who lives beyond the age of fifty “is revered as a repository of our collective life and is sought out for guidance…. We harvest these sweet fruits from the sages and cook a recipe for our own palate.”

What a marvelous image! We harvest the fruits of those who have gone before us, but we do not simply preserve those fruits. Instead, we use those fruits to cook up a meal that meets our contemporary needs, that matches our own taste. There is, inevitably, transformation. No tradition is fully rigid, unchanging.

Cooking is an everyday example of transformation. Yes, an egg is an egg is an egg. But an egg in an omelet and an egg in a cake taste totally different. Just last week, I made potato salad one day and beef stew the next. The potatoes in each came out of the same bag, but the taste, the aroma, the dining experience was totally different.

So often, we think that transformation is beyond us. “I’m too old to change,” many say. I say, if an egg or potato can be transformed, so can you. And so can I.

During Lent, we journey toward the good news of resurrection. The Soul Windows CD, The Dawning, invites you to follow Mary Magdalene to the empty tomb, guided by Bill's words and the thoughtful music of Geri Pieper. To order The Dawning, as an Easter gift for yourself or for others, click here or on the image.

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