Epiphany

I'd like to start the new year on a positive mode, and, in order to do it, I recollect that it just was Christmas and soon it will be Epiphany.

Nice promising word epiphany: the showing forth, sensory manifestation of something glorious, an event of beauty that leaves you ecstatic.

Thing for theologians, you will say, people of faith.

Nay, thing for everybody, without which the world becomes a rather sad place.

Which lover hasn't experienced a moment of contemplative looking at the beloved, in full marvel for the sheer grace of his or hers existence? A moment, let's say, of ecstasy, being out of oneself before a manifestation – again an epiphany – of another, better world?

I correct myself, it isn't the vision of another world, but of this very world we live in, transfigured in the full light of its perfection, showing forth in the person of the beloved. Who ceases to be just that bodily individual. Forgetting ourselves, in that woman we see all women, in that man all men, in that child all children.

A new born baby can draw from us a smile or even a laughter of joy, because of the renewal of life that shows in him: in two words, life eternal.

I think there isn't anybody who has never experienced such a moment of joy. Even if he doesn't consciously remember it. Its total lack would make him, I suspect, quite deranged.

Ok, after Epiphany we get back to the ordinary, imperfect world. In which love can end, and the once beloved person become estranged from us.

So we get back to the topics of human contrasts to which the LD and I referred in the last posts. With regard to which the LD expressed the suspicion of a cultural derangement afflicting our world. I agree, such is the effect of the lack of recognition of epiphany. But about this in another post.

To be positive for now, let's notice that without the recollection of love we couldn't even lament its absence.

HP