The Personal Epiphany

At this time every January come celebrations of the 12th Night and Epiphany.

So many people have a sense of emptiness as our widely recognized holidays in the United States wind up after New Year's. But for many around the world, the joy is just gaining steam as the seasons of Mardi Gras and Carnival begin. I guess we don't allow this contagion to take hold because it would get in the way of our need to be engaged in the busyness of work, school, schedules, and other pressing responsibilities. Joy and Celebration are reserved for weekends. Why only on weekends? The feast should go on every day!

But I digress. Epiphany is meant to remind us of a dream that warned the Magi who sought and found baby Jesus to avoid a royal lynch mob by going home another way. It was a life-saver for them. But like most of those stories, there is a broader lesson for each of us. The awakening and new understanding of those Ah-Ha or Eureka moments were not relegated to Wise Men two thousand plus years ago. They are not confined only to holy people or those seekers on a spiritual quest. For Thomas Merton, the monk and author, a personal epiphany came on a shopping trip to Louisville, Kentucky. For Bill Wilson of AA, it came during a white light moment while hospitalized. For Albert Einstein, it came while he was sailing. Harper Lee writes about hers in the semi-autobiographical To Kill A Mockingbird through the eyes of the little girl, Scout;

I turned to go home. Street lights winked down the street all the way to town. I had never seen our neighborhood from this angle. There were Miss Maudie's, Miss Stephanie's-there was our house, I could see the porch swing-Miss Rachel's house was beyond us, plainly visible.

The result of an epiphany is a new or expanded sense of self and of life. It creates a deep belief. The cry of the heart announces; "I found it" followed by wonder and awe. Light is shed on what had been unseeable. What was unknowable overcomes darkness with love.

My own epiphany came on a camping trip in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. I was sleeping in a tent under an awning of stars with my best friend near what is believed to be a Cherokee ritual space among huge boulders. I was awakened in a dream to find the back of the tent gone. The vision offered me a glimpse at the edge of the Universe overlooking all of creation. It was all good and it was all God. Nothing separated any of us from each other or from anything that ever existed. It has shaped my life ever since. Not that my wanderings have always been without doubt or misdirection. I have stumbled more than once. But that moment of dream induced clarity can never be erased. It influences me regardless of the circumstances.

As this new decade descends and plays out, it will make all of the difference if we are willing to receive personal epiphanies. They come in small discoveries and in profound experiences. A great way to start is by allowing the season of celebration to continue. Let's not drag ourselves into the humdrum of ordinariness. The possibilities are endless. Every single moment is pregnant with hope.

A Journey at Night; The Road That Takes Us Home

They roused him up in the dark of night. It was time to go. They even watched him get dressed. Humiliated, he pulled on his jeans and yanked a tee shirt over his head. A shiver went up his spine. Or maybe it was a shudder. All he knew for sure was this is what had filled him with dread for so many days since the hearing. Fighting back tears, he looked up at the woman and the police officer. There was no way he was going to cry in front of them. And no getting out of this situation. He would be leaving home for good and going somewhere to be with people he didn't know. Through the darkness and rain they went down unfamiliar streets until the Plymouth pulled up in front of a big house. There were people under a dim light standing on the porch.

Stories like this one have been shared with me over the years by dozens of boys and girls who 'fell into the system' for one reason or another.

Foster placements, detention centers, or other institutions become makeshift homes where wounded and broken kids are hidden away and sometimes forgotten. But I tell this compilation tale, not to shed light on our often woefully deficient children's services programs. I'll save that for another day. I tell it to you because this is your story. It's the story of each of us. It pauses at some point with a dim light and door opening. There is no clue to process or outcome because that’s how life's spiritual journey goes. It is always searching for home.

I've written extensively about the spiritual journey, faith, love, and transformation. These seem to be the things most important to explore. And during these seasons of light, we are reminded that in order to really appreciate the light we must have known darkness. We are taken far away on bumpy roads and put into boats. Our wanderings take us to troubled waters with no land in sight. Hard times and good times alike make us begin to ache for home.

With no compass and only the North Star to guide us we begin to stumble back in the general direction as best we can. Our hunger to be welcomed is only equaled by the fear that we will be rejected. For the kept secrets have been revealed and we will be fully known. Then we reach the hilltop overlooking those familiar fields.

The sun is just rising and you have been discovered. Both father and mother run out to greet you. The fatted calf is being prepared in your honor. The one who was lost has been found. They whisper in your ear the words you have so desperately needed to hear. You are my beloved child. Welcome home. Welcome home. Welcome home.

Descending Into Fear; Finding Spiritual Wholeness

I recently wrote about how love trumps fear.  Truly, love is the only game in town as far as trumping goes.  We are programmed by our culture to dismiss fear and equate it with cowardice.  When I was a boy, the one who showed fear was called 'yellow' and teased about being a baby.  An image of General George S. Patton slapping a young WWII soldier who was overcome by fear is an iconic example of our disdain for succumbing to it.  Love is not always easy to find when fear shows up.

But love is always present and always ready to be discovered.  Overlooking it is the problem.  We tend to try finding relief from fear by being brave, and by ascending above the troublesome circumstances we face.  Though there might be some validity to rising above fear, the solution is only temporary.  By shoving fear aside, planting it deep inside, and never dealing with it, we are setting up lifelong chronic survival responses. We are trying to grab control and hang on for dear life.  I'm not saying we shouldn't be brave.  I'm saying that there is a time in which we must descend into the fear in order to find our true identity. Love can only be found when our tough exterior is cracked open.

"Up is nowhere special at all, but hidden inside of down. Up is dangerous for the soul, while down is communal and comforting." ~ Richard Rohr

The descent into fear is well chronicled in religion, mythology, and tales handed down to us over the millennia.  The Bible story of Jonah being swallowed by a whale, Luke Skywalker and friends caught in the bowels of a garbage compactor, Jesus' forty-day desert experience, and Muhammad's revelation in the cave Hira, all reveal the necessity of facing our greatest fears by entering into the depths of innermost being.  The result is a mystic transformation.  This is what Joseph Campbell called the Hero's Journey. So, being bold enough to descend into fear leads us to the tunnel of liberation.  This is authentic courage.  It is not made up of violence and retaliation.  It is an embrace of our true selves and hence, a full embrace of infinite love.  In what seems to be brokenness we experience wholeness...and we find God.