We are in our winter of listening; of attending inwardly despite all the temptations to focus on the outer noise:
the carnage of a failing empire will always be a vexatious distraction – its interesting isn’t it when language catches up with behaviour; last week I was doing something, and then this week I discovered there is a phrase for it: “Doom scrolling”: the habit of scrolling down social media to find the next catastrophe hit: the next death toll, the next presidential outrage, the next insurrection; next shamefully offensive remark about child poverty by a government minister.
against this kind of temptation I ‘m first going to query (as you may also be wondering) why in my services this January I am not going to address either the catastrophic handling of the Virus or Brexit by our shambolic Government or the shabby president of america’s unlawful attempt to cling to power; here is why in a nutshell taken from a poem by Jack Gilbert: “We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the devil. If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the end had magnitude. We must admit there will be music despite everything.”
So while I don’t deny the horrible fixation that current affairs exerts over me, I do deny it space here, here where we attend I think to a different current, a different tide, another kind of light.

And that said the services we’ve shared the last two weeks at least on zoom have not been about light but about the dark. I ve been suggesting that we must be prepared to persevere in this state of discomfort; instead of comforting ourselves falsely, or jumping to the conclusion or expected outcome (instead of spiritual bypassing – another useful phrase I’ve only recently learned) we are going to have to bear with the load we have been given in order to become strong enough to eventually overcome it; like a tree that grafts over wounding until the wound becomes stronger than the rest of the body – which is, I think, one of the secret meanings of ‘blessing’( https://boyhood.tumblr.com/post/76783406982/in-french-the-verb-blesser-means-to-wound-in).

So today I want to talk about another secret meaning of epiphany – or return to it rather, but return by another route:

Do not expect to return by the same road. Home is always by another way, and you will know it not by the light that waits for you but by the star that blazes inside you, telling you where you are is holy – Jan Richardson

Where you are is holy. yes ma’am.

I reminded you of the meaning of epiphany the appearance of God, and its modern usage deriving from the Unitarian poet and minister Emerson to indicate a sudden realisation; which we re-christened a lightbulb moment: as seen wonderfully illustrated by the Gru character in the film Despicable Me: “lightbulb”

We all are aware of moments in our lives when the big light suddenly lit up and we came to a truth we hadn’t expected but which we recognised like an old friend we had never met before; or came home to a place we knew for the first time; and it doesn’t have to be earth shattering, like Newton discovering gravity as an apple fell on his head, sometimes it is simplicity itself: like when you understand that all is well. When you get that despite all that is wrecked and awful and wrong, you are still delighted.
Epiphany, into your darkness a saviour reaches and it is as if a light comes “lightbulb” to remind you that grace is possible that you are accepted…

This light is indirect – it is reflected light, the visible reminder of invisible light.

it is reflected light and that is why I wanted to hear those two pieces of moon inspired music: the moonlight sonata and moonshine freeze that remind me of these lovely lines from TS Eliot’s poem Our gaze is submarine, our eyes look upward And see the light that fractures through unquiet water. We see the light but see not whence it comes.

I was once at a General Assembly meeting when we were asked, a group of 300 or so people I suppose we were, if we’d please raise our hand if we’d ever experienced a moment we could not explain rationally, a moment that was supernatural or perhaps spiritual, but anyway inexplicable. Unusually for me at these events I was sitting near the front – and I was wary of giving away this aspect of myself, me who likes to be so cynical and rational but since I‘d been asked I thought: “well… it would be wrong to lie”, and so I raised my hand. And then I took a look around behind me and saw, to my complete surprise, that nearly every hand in the room was raised; all these rationalist hardliners and humanist tub-thumpers, realists and atheists almost everyone acknowledging that we live in a world that is to some degree greater or small, mysterious. We are all struggling to know the unknowable.

Right now all sorts of strange ideas seem to be surfacing like bubbles from the deep, people who think that the virus isn t real, or that it is real but deliberate. People who think that lizards are in control, or out of control; and it is right that we learn to discern well what is true from the false. Many of these silly narratives are self deceptions told more to entertain tired minds than to reveal deeper truths, but perhaps some are not quite consciously invented to make at least some response to powerlessness, or failure to understand…

Now into our own inner lives realities emerge from the darkness illuminated by a reflected light – realities that help us to discover, like the narrator in Borges poem, that these our griefs, our sorrows and our losses make us what we are, and as the inessential falls away that they are somehow become our true home; our algebra and our key, and it is our wounds, our griefs, our losses which are become our ‘secret blessings’, our real powers, not super-powers, but our natural powers, and we have a responsibility to live into them, to live them well, with grace and skill, to live them into being.

And this is the epiphany of the ancients, this is the meaning of the indwelling of God through humanity, this is the universal incarnation; that our human hurts, our sufferings and losses can be lived out with bravery not defensiveness, with tenderness instead of brittleness, gentleness instead of spikiness.
And this will take great patience, great healing and with grace and humility and courage for sure, and failure along the journey no doubt. But it is our journey to chose:
Do not expect to return by the same road. Home is always by another way, and you will know it not by the light that waits for you but by the star that blazes inside you, telling you where you are is holy – Jan Richardson