transfiguration Archives - Gerry Lynch: Priest, Writer, Photographer

Awe and Glory: A Reflection for Holy Week (Wednesday 1st April 2026)

1 April 2026 by Gerry Lynch

Given at Christ Church, Bulkington

Reading—Mark 9. 2-8

A vast, open landscape photographed at dusk or just after sunset. The foreground shows a recently harvested field, its dry golden-brown stubble occupying the lower third of the image, with a grass-edged farm track running diagonally from the lower right toward the horizon. At the centre of the horizon stands a single solitary tree, silhouetted in dark brown-black against a spectacular sky. The sky is the dominant feature: deep, rich cobalt blue at the top gradually softens through lighter blue into a luminous pale glow near the horizon, which itself blazes with bands of warm amber and orange where the sun has recently set. The effect is one of vast space, stillness, and solitude — the lone tree the only vertical element in an otherwise horizontal, almost minimalist composition. — *Awe in the everyday. ‘I Touched Infinity’, Potterne Hill, 27 July 2024, © Gerry Lynch.*

A perfect sunset, a chord by Fauré, the giggle of a baby, the stars on a dark night – all of those can give us the most extraordinary sensation, for which we use the word awe. We become aware that we have encountered something that is more glorious than the language we have to describe it – much greater in scale and complexity, much greater in beauty and moral grandeur. We sense that we are part of something far bigger than ourselves. Wonder mixes with fear. We are lifted up out of the drudgery of our routine lives. Yet we also realise how small we are; if we are lucky, our ego deflates a bit.

Awe is more than just a feeling. It seems to remind us of facts of life that we often forget. The universe is indeed vast; each one of us is small and lives for the briefest of spans; yet we are distantly related to all life on Earth; the complex elements that make up our bodies were forged in the furnaces of long-dead stars. Everything does indeed connect.

Much of contemporary life seems as if it were designed to minimise the number of times we experience that sense of awe, and from thinking too deeply about it when it does happen. The constant buzzes and beeps, the 24-hour TV schedule, and the infinite scrolling websites aim to keep us chained to our screens so we never notice what is beyond.

To notice the truth of our lives, we need to escape their humdrum.

Heaven in Lidl Car Park: Sermon Preached on 15th February 2026 (Sunday Before Lent)

15 February 2026 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at Holy Cross, Seend and St Peter’s, Poulshot

2 Peter 1.16–21 ; Matthew 17.1–9

“And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun.”

Did I ever tell you about the time I saw Lidl in Devizes transfigured? We don’t expect to see transfiguration when we’re running out to buy a packet of biscuits and a cheap bottle of wine… but it happens.

“Branded Twilight”, © Derek Finch, 16 May 2025, used under Creative Commons Licence 4.0.

We all know what it is to drive down a familiar road, somewhere that’s a bit run-of-the-mill and isn’t exactly known for being pretty, and find that your eyes are suddenly open to a beauty that you hadn’t noticed before. Often it might be the way the Sun lights a long-familiar scene, especially in the golden hours around sunrise and sunset; or it might be the sudden appearance of a red kite or a lost pair of deer; or it might be the trees in autumn, and at this time of year it is often, of course, the flowers.

Well, Lidl looks very different in twilight, especially on one of those rare evenings when the clouds are lit crimson from below. When the conditions are like that, sometimes you find that for a minute or two, the strip lights in the store shine through the window with just the perfect cast to complement the clouds. I remember one night in particular, about three or four years ago, when I was doing my shopping just a little bit later in the year than this, and this wonderful sight was accompanied by a hint of springtime blossom on the breeze, and a blackbird was singing for the last time in the day before it went to sleep—and just for a brief moment, you could sense Heaven breaking into the car park of Lidl in Devizes.

In just the right circumstances, even the most banal of things can experience a transfiguration, reminding us that the whole of creation is supercharged with awe and wonder.

A Clergyman’s Diary: A Wiltshire Transfiguration

12 October 2021 by Gerry Lynch

The Wansdyke near Baltic Farm, 10 October 2021. © Gerry Lynch.

Nobody is quite sure when the Wansdyke was built, but the most commonly advanced theory is that it was built by the Romano-British after they were abandoned by the Imperial power to defend their stronghold in what is now Gloucestershire, Somerset, and northern Wiltshire, in the face of Saxon expansion spreading northwards from the English Channel. This would date it to around the end of the 5^th Century. Regardless of exactly at which point in the transition from Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England it was built, it seems that the much later Anglo-Saxons had lost any idea about its purpose when, despite several centuries of Christianity, they named it Woden’s Dyke, after Odin, the king of the Norse gods, around the 9^th Century.

The eastern section, in Wiltshire, has been much less disturbed over the centuries by agriculture and building than those further west, and this section, north of the village of Bishops Cannings, is particularly dramatic when lit by low late afternoon sun from the south in autumn and winter.

On a rainy day in midwinter, with the rain belting down for weeks, it can be a little disappointing, a flat bank of mud surrounded by dirty puddles. Yet the sun can transfigure it into mysterious magnificence in all seasons, always easy on the ankles, even for someone with my short legs and my fat belly. The ground remains springy and fast when in a hot dry spell when the surrounding terrain is drained and hard; and also when it is surrounded by wet muck.

Looking east from Morgan’s Hill towards Tan Hill, the Wansdyke just visible in the bottom of the valley, 10 October 2021. © Gerry Lynch.

It is as much as 4 metres high in places. It is followed by a long-distance footpath for all of this stretch. The view in the distance reaches to Tan Hill, at 294 metres above sea level the joint highest point in Wiltshire.

This is deep England. The countryside is not especially dramatic but rolls with a heart-healing, gentle, beauty. I walk here regularly, with various circuits of 12-18 miles (19-30 km) starting and finishing from my home in Devizes taking in stretches of it. When the light is like this, it makes my soul sing and fills me with gratitude for being alive.