We all need them. Regularly. A life-changing insight into the truth; a revelation; a sudden, unexpected, unforced, unpremeditated, realization of the way things really are.
That's why the place where we live in Tasmania is called "Epiphany"—because our hope and prayer is that whoever comes here will have one (and that includes those of us who live here!).
Our community is called "Emmaus"; but the place where we live is called "Epiphany". And the two go together beautifully.
The community is named after a place that signifies pilgrimage: the road to Emmaus. As a monastic community we are on a journey through this world, in the company of the mysterious stranger; as strangers ourselves, having no permanent purchase in this world, but walking through it as pilgrims do—with all due respect, even reverence; but without any attachment or desire to set up home ... much less "shop"!
The place where we live, however, is named after an event, an experience, a revelation: an epiphany—or, perhaps even more tellingly, Theophany. For it is God we encounter; it is God who reveals and is revealed; it is God, and God alone who makes this place what it is: an encounter with the One who is pure Mystery ... Mystery revealing itself as loving us.
Please note: not a mystery; not even the mystery; but simply and purely Mystery. For God is not "a" or "the" anything—except in the most analogical and metaphorical sense. Indeed, God is not even "a god". God is pure Mystery as such; just as God is pure being as such. And this Mystery loves us. This is the substance of the epiphany, the theophany that is Christ.
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