Presence

I had an epiphany this morning; it happend in shul, before davening, while I was reviewing this weeks parsha. This post is not about the content of the epiphany, but rather on the general experience of having an epiphany.

For me, the epiphany is not an instant, "eureka," moment. Rather, it's usually preceeded by a few days' (or weeks') of various different thoughts bouncing around inside my head. At some point, a theory is formed that explains the various different thoughts and puts them into some unified context. Now I'm working with a theory, but I don't know for sure that it's correct; it just seems to fit. And then, the epiphany happens, some thought or idea that ties it all together in such a way that it's just perfect. It's like a Tetris game, and you've got one really, really long straight piece, and you clear off the whole board.

In this case, it was the beginning of parshas Va'eschanan; I felt the epiphany gathering speed as I read the opening of the parsha. As I went through the Ten Commandments and Shema, everything was coming together, bits and pieces of ideas that had been floating around in my head were all rushing at me, as if propelled by some cognitive whirlwind. When I got to Duet 6:18, it was all over, everything fit together perfectly.

As for the content of the epiphany, I'm going to get to that later (I may podcast it, since it's easier to talk through these things than to write them down). But it really was a Perfect Storm; stuff from the previous posts on Devarim, Euthyphro, Genesis, everything just falling into place. I can only describe it as serendipitous; they are some of the only moments of my life that I might be convinced to acknowledge as attributable to a higher power.

This post also stands as proof that I can not write just two lines about anything.