Pop 89: Epiphanies

By Madonna Hamel

My first exposure to “epiphany” was to The Epiphany, the night the three men wisely gifted baby Jesus. A personal “epiphany” happens when one is hit by a profound insight. The insight usually comes unbidden, propelled by events or people. If we are lucky, the insight is a unifying experience, pulling fragments of a life together to make some kind of sense of it. If we witness the epiphany with a prepared or at least open mind, it can be a watershed moment, a life-changing gift.

I'm still in Kelowna helping my sister tend to my dad after his stroke. And the insights are coming faster than I can register them. I'm writing this in a cafe, and it's snowing outside and getting colder by the minute; not unusual weather for the Prairies, but it's "insane," according to the locals. I want to say: suck it up. But that would make me a jerk. Not an insight I prefer.

James Joyce, the Irish author who spent a lot of time claiming he rejected his Catholic faith, depended on Catholic symbols, metaphors, and feast days to enrich the depth of meaning and colour of his stories. Most of his stories are inside Catholic feast days. Perhaps, more than anyone else in the modern age, he is responsible for using the word "epiphany" to mean "eureka."

This epiphany I drove to Rutland to get new tires and attend a late afternoon mass celebrated by my favourite priest, Fr. Pat. In 2013, he agreed to be the subject of a radio segment I made for CBC on the topic of Lent. Squatting over his hibachi, burning "last year's Palm Sunday Palms for this year's Easter ashes," he explained to me things about my childhood faith I was never taught. You just need to remember this, he laughed, seeing me scribbling notes furiously, one epiphany following after another, "We all belong." 

He also said later that he hoped I received the Grace I came for. And, pointing at the line of cars of parishioners leaving the church, waiting to make left-hand turns onto the busy main road, he added: "And try not to spend all your Grace leaving the parking lot."

Ten years later, I'm still taking notes, trying to be as surreptitious as possible in my pew at the back of Corpus Christi while he speaks of the gifts of magi.

Gift one is gold, he says, representing glory and kingship. I notice, for the first time, in just about every depiction of the Nativity, that the king bearing gold stands taller than the others, his head closer to heaven. 

Gift two is frankincense. I recall an article about the National Gallery in London creating a soundscape to enhance the story of The Adoration of the Kings. Called Sensing the Unseen, it broadcast sounds of oxen lowing and bells ringing. But with the second magi's presentation of incense, Fr. Pat reminds us of another sense, the sense of smell.

In Christ's day, if you were wealthy, you hired someone to waft incense before you, clearing a space of the smells of dung and rot before entering. "Think about it," he said, "of all the miracles Christ performed - eyes to see and ears to hear - nobody asked him to have their sense of smell revived. No thanks, I'm good."

I think about our recent days and weeks on the rehab ward of the hospital, passing the washrooms on the ward. The last thing to go is our bowels. We don't like to mention it or talk about it. But the world is a cornucopia of smells. In fact, of all the senses, smell is the strongest memory sense. Incense is, therefore, the perfect gift for the second king, who is most often pictured kneeling on the ground. He is those of us in the in-between. Kneeling on earth, experiencing the very full, very human, sensual experience of being alive.

Then comes myrrh. Myrrh was used both for embalming and anointing. How perfect, I thought, looking at the king closest to the baby: he is practically laying down in his effort to get close to meet Jesus eye to eye. The magus lowest to the ground is giving the newborn child not only the anointing herb, fitting the prince of peace but also the herb to preserve the body of the one willing to do whatever it takes to save the rest of us.

So be thankful for all the gifts, Fr. Pat continues, because every acknowledgement makes it easier to be generous later. You see how much you have, and you are willing to give more. "Which is good," he says, "because life is one long process of giving away, of simplifying. Generosity leads to detachment." You become more and more able to let go, all the way to the end. So, nurture generosity and give glory for the generosity in your life, he says, "because this is what saves us when the crosses show up." 

James Joyce's character Stephen Deadalus defines epiphany as "a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself." I'd agree that the key feature of most epiphanies is how their suddenness. 

In his short story The Dead, Joyce's character Gabriel has an epiphany after he makes a grand dinner speech. "We are living in a skeptical and thought-tormented age," he says. He fears the next generation will "lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour." But despite his intellectual ability to depict his times, he could not see his wife's buried grief until that night, watching her listening to a song on the staircase. 

As desperately as I've wanted an epiphany, I've never had one in an expected place or at an appointed time. But I know I must remain open to generosity- to receive and give equally, as long as I remain grovelling on this earthly ground.