Epiphany (revealing moment)
When I was growing up, Catholics believed that Epiphany celebrates three kings who visited Jesus in the manger. Today the word epiphany is more pregnant with meaning. Various definitions of epiphany show its intangible quality—flash, insight, inspiration, realization. Epiphanies are sudden flashes of awakening to the inner realm. To illustrate, I am re-posting a story I wrote about in this space before. In Fingerprints of God , Barbara Bradley Hagerty never speaks the word “epiphany” but that’s what she writes about, reluctantly. She was a little embarrassed, “spooked,” to find herself experiencing transcendence. An NPR correspondent, Hagerty explores whether science can find physical evidence of God in her book, Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality . She wanted to know, Does brain activity reflect encounters with a spiritual dimension? I’m glad she used terms like “spiritual dimension,” “transcendence” and “spiritu...