EPIPHANY
I had one in church this morning... an epiphany. The sanctuary wasn’t crowded... maybe half full. I sat in the next to last row of the east transept and experienced the service from an unfamiliar vantage point. Today was Stewardship Sunday in the Methodist calendar. Having seen the sermon title, “Your Money or your Life,” on the marquee as I drove past it several times this week, I wasn’t surprised that the focus in morning worship would be at least partly on the church’s annual budget. Two choirs sang anthems. A lay liturgist began the pastoral prayer with a greeting, “Good morning, God.” The sermon was not a crass pitch for money but a call, a challenge, to be neighborly, to be fruitful, to do good things for others. The pastor quoted Barbara Bush, Maya Angelo, and the Apostle Paul.

But it wasn’t in the morning worship service that my epiphany occurred. My vision of the world was not changed. Well then, perhaps it wasn’t a full-blown epiphany; maybe it was just a simple insight, a slightly different way of seeing... which is the point of this writing.

From eleven o’clock until twelve o’clock on Sunday mornings I participate in discussion with a group of friends who are currently reading Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God. As I listened to my friends talk about Armstrong’s ideas and their own ideas about God, I had to admit to myself that I know almost nothing about God. All of the notions about God that I carried from my childhood into adulthood, notions that became more and more vague, less and less distinct as I got older... all those pictures from Sunday School Bibles and Renaissance artists now seem totally invalid. Armstrong writes about Buddhism, Jainism, Confucianism, and Taoism, as well as the three monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that they all agree on a central principal that “religion is not a notional matter.” She points out, for example, that The Buddha refused to discuss the matter of if and when god had created the world. The questions are irrelevant because pain, hatred, grief, and sorrow would still exist even if the questions could be answered. It’s the old “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” sort of question... a question for which any answer would be of no practical value.

O.K! Now to the matter of my insight, which I admit doesn’t rise even near the level of epiphany: Often we adults, in our sincere effort to give children information and directions that will serve them well, insist that they see the world as we see it. We expect them to accept our vision of the world and to acknowledge back to us that they understand and accept it as their own. Of course, there is specific information that should be taught and there are skills which we want our children to learn. I was a successful teacher for many years. I was a parent of young children about whom I can now say that they have grown into remarkable and wonderful adults. I was responsible for teaching my own children... and at least partly responsible for teaching the children of other people... about the world. Teaching them to read and to do math and to find Armenia on a map are useful skills. Long ago I was a student teacher in a public school in Yuba City, California. In my last interview with my master teacher, she told me as I gathered my things and prepared to leave her classroom. She said, “Jerral, remember. You teach who you are.” Under her supervision, I had been teaching English in her classroom. I had a vague notion of what she meant when she said “You teach who you are.” I thought she wanted me to set a good example to my students. I thought she meant that I shouldn’t misbehave in ways that might confuse them or lead them into trouble. Whatever she actually had in her mind that day, I believe what she said was perhaps even more profound than either of us knew.

Fast forward fifty-plus years, and I am now a man who goes out every day in search of a vision of the world. I say clearly that mine is a vision of the world, not a vision for the world. If someone sees what I see the way I see it, that’s fine with me; but it’s not a requirement for friendship or love. What I now see is that my responsibility all those years of teaching and parenting was not to impress my personal vision of the world onto others but to help them gain the skills to acquire their own vision.

It is appropriate that photography is my major hobby... my avocation. Photograph is as good a metaphor as any for seeing, for vision.