Today is Epiphany Sunday. The very first time I attended a Unitarian chapel was on Epiphany, so I always consider it a sort of anniversary. I used to pass by the chapel on my way to work every day and notice the word “Unitarian” and wonder what that meant. If I find out I’ll let you know.

That day the reading was from the Tao Te Ching. Like many people of my generation who are estranged from conventional religion the Tao is for me a sort of safe zone, it’s a work of spiritual scripture which speaks of ‘the way’ and can be interpreted by the secular and the religious alike – in any case I immediately felt reassured.
The chapter might have been this one (Ch.25):

There was something formless and perfect
before the universe was born.
It is serene. Empty.
Solitary. Unchanging.
Infinite. Eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
For lack of a better name,
I call it the Tao.

It flows through all things,
inside and outside, and returns
to the origin of all things.

The minister told us that it was Epiphany Sunday.

The Church celebrates the feast of Epiphany on the 6th of January and it’s traditionally associated with the Magi, the three wise men, from the nativity narrative in the Gospel of Matthew (ch. 2: 10-14) perhaps because they represent the appearance of Jesus to the wider world – or perhaps because God appears to them in a dream warning them to return home by another route).

Epiphany is a Greek word meaning an appearance or manifestation of the divine. Literally: a vision from above.

So its interesting that in our materialist culture we still use the word at all.

“an Epiphany” has come to mean a sudden moment of profound insight, something that is so unusual or surprising that the perception is able to change the way we think, perhaps even change our whole life. In secular terms it is a turning point.
The Unitarian thinker Emerson was the first to use the word Epiphany in this modern sense. He described a moment in his life when he could see everything with absolute clarity; he saw that all things were connected, that he was connected to all things and that everything, everything was God.
Listen to this famous passage from his Essay “Nature” [1841]

Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”

And the tao again:

The Master observes the world
but trusts his inner vision.
He allows things to come and go.
His heart is open as the sky.

In current usage an Epiphany is a life changing moment of inspiration – and retains a link with the passage from Matthew with its contact between God and humanity. Inspiration is a moment of spiritual not rational enlightenment, a moment when something vividly larger than life surges momentarily into focus. And this moment of revelation always reminds us of something larger than the self.

It flows through all things,
inside and outside, and returns
to the origin of all things. Lao Tzu

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. T.S. Eliot from Little Gidding

Eliot’s poem Little Gidding (which we heard earlier) seems to me full of the sense of Epiphany – of the revealed presence of God as light fails in the little church where “prayer has been valid” and of the season too; the “midwinter spring” where the short day is brightest… with a glare that is blindness in the afternoon.

Another writer with Unitarian connections Kurt Vonnegut, made an observation about Epiphany that has remained with me. He has two characters discuss the nature of Epiphany in his novel Blue-beard and one of them says that Epiphany is a moment when we are clutched tightly in the palm of God’s hand; when His plan for us is manifest. But on the contrary says his friend, Epiphany is the moment when we are suddenly dislocated from our destiny, released from the grip of fate. I love the ambiguity of this dialogue but prefer another sense; in Epiphany we might be thrown from the safety of the known and routine into far more dangerous and exciting realms where we follow not our own will, but a greater One.

Epiphany is a feast Unitarians can especially mark; not necessarily as a commemoration of miracles or apparitions but as a celebration of connection with God; of the power of truth. It speaks of the power of the Divine in our journey not as an abstract idea but as a present reality, a jolt; this religion is something we do – not something pious we merely prefer to believe in. Epiphany reminds us of the moment when things can suddenly change and re-align at the beginning of the year.