 | The New England Church PulpitNew England Congregational Church UCC |
LITTLE EPIPHANIES | Psalm 130 | March 17, 2002 |
I happened to be in theological school in Boston at the time, and became friends with many of these theologians. I used to celebrate the Seder with Rosemary Reuther and her husband Herk and three children each Friday evening. I traveled and spoke as a protege of Mary Daly’s. I went to parades and sipped champagne and ate strawberries in celebration of spring with Harvey Cox. I wrote papers for Gabriel Fackre and James Luther Adams. I was young, a radical feminist, and these people were as eager to learn about feminism as I was eager to learn theology. It was a rich experience! There is a particular ecstasy that is evoked in the learning process.
I studied all these theologies, wrote papers, attended seminars, and committed my energy and enthusiasm to learning. I look back at it now and am amazed at the people whose lives have touched and influenced mine. Yet, strangely enough, the books or papers did not move my life. The theologies I studied, learned, wrote about, and lectured on did not touch the core of my being—and they have little more to say to me now, for these theologies count on consistency, they depend upon logical belief.
I have never been one who is a consistent believer, but I had learned how to study theology and to write papers. I was a student who played the academic game well. I argued, questioned, doubted, and challenged these new theologies. And as a token woman and a token liberal I flaunted my uniqueness. In fact, I used it to full advantage. But in seminary’s three year’s time I argued on others’ territory, used their categories, and their intellectual grounds for belief. I never once spoke of my own theology, my own belief, my own creed. I realized then, as I do now, that in the world of the orthodox, in the world of tradition, I feel strangely vulnerable. My theology does not speak of the Death of God or Jesus as Liberator. It is not so grandiose; it is not so memorable. Instead my theology is of little epiphanies.
Epiphany—a sudden intuitive perception of insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some commonplace occurrence. A theology of the commonplace, a theology of intuitive perception. Not intellectual insight, but intuitive perception. An affair of the heart and soul. Not so much of the mind. This theology cannot match forces with crucification and resurrection, or of the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, or the road to Damascus. I cannot relate to the virgin birth or walking on water. And so for years I was and have been silent.
But since I am one of your ministers, I want to share with you my theological perspective, of little Epiphanies. A theology of little things—small memories, tiny events, minuscule moments.
There are many types of little Epiphanies. First there are what I call my daily epiphanies—the tiny moments strung together like the bright shiny beads in Emerson’s essay on “Experience.”
Daily epiphanies. Mine work like this. Each morning when I walk outside to get into my car to drive to work I begin my journey by appreciating the out of doors: trees, leaves-establishing my relationship with the world: spring—garden—delicacy of flowers—winter—shape of snowfall—color and light—summer—rich earth’s bloom.
When I arrive at my office I stop and chat with others and before I start my desk work I call one person just to give them positive regard. This establishes my connection with co-workers and colleagues. My daily epiphanies are small gifts from which I receive much more than I give.
Daily epiphanies—small moments of connection and joy with the world. These moments sustain me through most tragic events of the ministry. These daily epiphanies, small jewels, give my life joy and sparkle. In Emerson’s essay on experience he speaks of life’s experiences as small sparkling beads, strung to earth and reflect light. Like Emerson’s necklace of precious colored beads, epiphanol moments transform my day from just living to living deeply and well. These daily jewels of my life are the tender associations which nurture me to wholeness. I wear them gently; I wonder if those whose lives touch mine realize all these gifts given. Probably not. But I know it.
Little epiphanies take a different form over a longer period of time. Different from daily gems of life, these little epiphanies are those moments when we know looking back over time that we can point to a transforming moment as an Epiphany of Transformation. Have you ever been in a transition that you did not know was occurring until one day something clicked into place and voila—you were at a turning point, ready to make a change, or become different? This is the second type of epiphany. It’s just that one day we awake and through some commonplace occurrence our eyes are opened to ourselves differently.
Let me give you an example from my own life. When I was 18, I was the soloist at my best friend’s wedding. Later that day she was critically injured in an accident. Seven days after I had sung at her wedding I attended her funeral.
For about a month I wandered through my days in grief. I did not understand life or living. In the summer, still in the midst of my grief, I went to a field where our house had been located many years before. As I was walking out of doors listening to summer cicadas I came to our old yard, and though there was no longer a house, on the site one rose, wild and precious, bloomed in the tangled field of grasses.
I sat and looked. It was delicate, beautiful, whole, and lovely alone. I studied it for quite a while. To me the flower symbolized my life.
I left that wild field garden knowing that I would be healed of my grief, that I would live well and joyfully, and that I would achieve my childhood dream. I would enter the ministry. All of my life was transformed by one flower blooming amidst the tangle of field grasses.
Many people have experienced a calling—a miraculous event—when they are stunned to new awareness. Mine was more ordinary. I saw a rose, one solitary rose, and within its singular beauty I saw the potential of myself. Was I called to ministry by a rose? Perhaps. But more than that, this common ordinary experience helped me to become more myself, to live my dreams, and to face my doubts. This little epiphany of transformation has remained a moment of crystal significance across the past fifteen years. Because of the reassurance of one flower I stand before you today. Yet the flower only awakened me to my own ongoing process. I had been grieving and the flower illuminated to me the direction of my journey. The Epiphany of Transformation.
The third type of little epiphany is one of illumination—when through an ordinary event we see the world differently. Let me illustrate. When I was seven years old my father decided it was time I learned how to swim. I was quite eager, until I learned his style of instruction. He felt that children, like dogs, had an innate swimming sense, and his idea of teaching me to swim consisted of throwing me into deep water. He said I’d learn faster that way. Never being a docile child, I rebelled. “Forget it. Thanks, Dad, but no thanks. Sitting on the beach with the younger kids is a whole lot better than drowning.”
And my father, knowing once I set my jaw it was useless to argue with me, ran across the beach, crashing into the water with a splash and a dive. As he ran into the water, I noticed several other people at various stages of dunking or dipping themselves. I decided to spend time just watching. My day was not wasted. I discovered that there are many styles of entering the water: There are the terribly timid—one foot, test, and leave...These folks are non-swimmers. Next there are the waders—ankles...knees...but they never get wet. Then there are the waist waders—They stand and talk. The dunkers—wade slowly...knees, shoulders, and then dunk themselves. The backwards dunkers—wade, turn around facing the shore, and dunk, swimming backwards into deeper water. There are those who wade to knees or waist and dive.
Then there are those who, like my father, take a running start up the beach, splash and crash into the water—to the great consternation of all the others in various styles of entry.
At the age of seven, sitting on the beach I learned how many styles there are of entering the water. But water became the metaphor for life itself. As a child I realized if I had a variety of choices for entering the water, I have since learned for any other activity or for life itself I also had the same number of choices.
This little epiphany is one of illumination, of the alteration of perception to greater possibility. No grand moment...just a slow opening of myself to myself. Little epiphanies, small moments. They will never be recorded into any sort of Bible or Torah or become scriptural basis for a worldwide faith. But my little epiphanies are earth shattering in a different way. For in my moments of terror, fear, isolation, desolation, anger, or hurt I look to these seemingly small moments—and they sustain me.
Little epiphanies—daily moments that establish a connection of resonance and harmony. Transformative little epiphanies form an inclusive theology which makes the divine accessible to all, because we are in the process of becoming and have the ability to be transformed.
Little epiphanies of illumination, moments of faith, grace, baptized with life’s continual surprise, wonder, and joy.
As Liberal religionists we often need to be reminded to trust our intuition, to utilize the material of each day for our transcendent experience, and to become inspirited with and by life itself. Often we liberals use only our intellect rather than our sense, our spirits, and our inspiration.
Little epiphanies charge us to be in love with life. Little epiphanies challenge us to greater richness. Little epiphanies teach us that every moment can be holy. Little epiphanies—a theology of the commonplace, the everyday, the seemingly insignificant, but always the divine. Little epiphanies—small jewels of transformation and illumination, available to all, and giving each a theological story. Little Epiphanies.
—Denise D. Tracy
Epiphany by Gerry Thornton
If I held with baptism
I should want to be baptized
in that dark and somber crypt,
the dome-shaped stoney vault
that rises on the green
aside Pisa’s main attractions.
No external beauty draws one in,
no beauty within fastens the eye;
I stand, darkly suspended in space,
surrounded by stone.
So lodged,
I should certainly not require,
nor even accept,
a ritual of water
or words
or sacred incantations.
Rather,
even an “oh”
or an “ah”
will do
to set the stones a-telling and a-telling
a carol of wonder
sound
that bounds
and rebounds
and rebounds again
splitting the walls of settled consciousness.
If, perchance,
a do re me fa so la ti do
in dulcet tones
should follow in pulsating time,
I’m not sure
I should be able to stay.
I might find gravity too weak
and simply take flight of note and sail away
into the center of sound.
Of course,
beliefs being what they are,
none of this will happen.
But, having once heard,
I can take such flight
anytime I wish to remember.
Would that all the world’s children
might be freed
by grace
and surprised
by joy!
| Copyright © 2002 by Denise D. Tracy. All rights reserved. |