One early spring evening in 2016, I found myself in a parking lot in downtown Austin that had been closed off and converted to a concert venue during South by Southwest. This particular venue was set aside for just one event: Ray Benson’s 65th birthday party. You may not know who Ray Benson is, but like Nashville’s Harlan Howard, your favorite country singer does. (It’s ok. We all know you have listened to enough country music to have a favorite singer.)
If you really and truly do not have a favorite country singer, you might consider George Strait who, with more than 60 Number One country hits has been one of the most successful of the “hat acts” the emerged in the 1990s. You can guess where the term “hat act” comes from: the prominent white (or black) felt (or straw) western hat worn by the artists of the sub-genre. When George Jones sang “who’s gonna fill their shoes” about the disappearing country scene of the late 1980s, the hat acts answered the call.
Most especially George Strait, whose “Amarillo by Morning” starts with what The New Yorker called the most memorable fiddle overture in country music. On that night in the parking lot, the first note of that overture was enough to rocket me into previously unexperienced dimensions of Texasness. This experience may be as close as I ever come to understanding the experience that Peter, James, and John had at the Transfiguration, seeing Jesus in a fullness and wholeness that they had only guessed at before.
Not that George Strait is country music Jesus, but there is a curious commonality in that, when he is not wearing his hat, most people don’t recognize who George Strait is. Maybe that is not a big deal where you live, but it seems impossible that the King of Country could walk through Houston unnoticed. Then again, Jesus walked through most of ancient Israel without being recognized for who and what he was (if you accept the pronouncement from the cloud that Jesus is the son of God).
Peter was so astounded by Jesus’s radiating countenance that he figured they should just stay put forever. Jesus still had walking to do and presumably more radiating, but maybe the people around him just could not give their attention to that phenomenon in the way Peter and the Sons of Zebedee did on the mountaintop. Likewise, George Strait doesn’t stop being George Strait just because people don’t recognize him. It is not necessarily in the being but in the seeing that things don’t come together.
Thomas Merton famously said, “There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.” I’m fairly certain that his vision of the divine glory reflected in humanity did not last his whole lifetime. None of us can focus our attention forever. But it gives me hope that one moment on a mountain top, one moment on a street corner, or one moment in a parking lot might transform us forever such that things are never quite so dark again.