Following the Light After Epiphany

Sonoluminescence as a Way of Being

Epiphany arrives not with answers, but with light—often faint, often fleeting, but real enough to follow.

For many of us, Advent was a season of learning how to wait in the dark. This past year, that waiting was shaped in part by Christine Valters Paintner’s work through her book Give Me a Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year. Our church’s small group at The Open Door, thoughtfully led by Pastor Jennifer Frayer-Griggs, journeyed together through this ancient practice—letting a word choose us rather than striving to choose one for ourselves. It was a gentle, grounding invitation to listen more deeply to what God might be forming beneath the surface of our lives.

Christine has long been an online mentor and teacher for me, offering language and practices that honor slowness, embodiment, and mystery. Years ago, Kevin and I were also shaped by her presence as a retreat leader in Scotland on an Earth as the First Monastery retreat for soul-care leaders. There, prayer was inseparable from place. We were taught to listen not only inwardly, but outwardly—to the earth, to the gift of nature, and to the wisdom carried by creatures and landscape alike. Creation itself became a teacher, reminding us that attentiveness to the natural world is not peripheral to faith, but a vital way of encountering God.

That posture of listening—formed through community, practice, and place—feels especially necessary now.

As the church turns from Advent toward Epiphany, the invitation shifts. Epiphany is not about arrival so much as recognition. It is the season of noticing where light is already breaking in and daring to follow it.

The ancient story tells of wise ones—outsiders, seekers, readers of the night sky—who noticed a star and trusted it enough to move. They did not possess certainty. They did not have a map. They had only attention, courage, and a willingness to be led by light that appeared where they were already looking.

This Epiphany arrives for us in a season that still feels tender and shadowed. We are grieving the death of my father-in-law, Paul Bell—a man of steadiness, quiet presence, and deep devotion to his family, church and community. His passing has slowed us down and gently turned us toward a different kind of discernment.

Not Who are we now?
But what now?

What is the next faithful step when loss has altered the landscape? How do we carry forward what was most life-giving in Paul—his care, his steadiness, his way of showing up—and allow it to shape how we live? What does it look like to honor someone not only through memory, but through incorporation—letting the best of who he was continue to take flesh in our own lives?

Grief, in this way, becomes less about resolution and more about relationship. We are not trying to move past loss, but to live forward with it—attentive to what this season is asking of our being, our doing, and our loving.

This year, the word that has chosen me is sonoluminescence.

Sonoluminescence is a scientific phenomenon in which sound waves move through water and create a brief flash of light. Light born not from force, but from vibration. From listening. From pressure and surrender working together.

There is something profoundly Epiphany-shaped about this image.

Light does not always arrive through certainty or striving. Sometimes it comes through attentiveness—through allowing ourselves to be moved by grief, by love, by prayer, by the quiet sound of God already traveling through us.

In spiritual direction, Christine often invites people to notice what is “showing up.” The practice of choosing a word works the same way. The word becomes a kind of star—not one that explains everything, but one that orients us. It teaches us how to pay attention. It invites us to follow.

Sonoluminescence feels like an Epiphany word for a grieving season. It tells the truth: illumination may be brief. Fragile. Hard-won. And still holy.

It suggests that listening itself can generate light. That even when the waters feel deep and unsettled, something luminous can emerge—not by control, but by consent.

The wise ones brought gifts—gold, frankincense, myrrh—offerings rich with meaning. In this season, what we bring feels simpler and more vulnerable. We offer attention. Presence. Honesty. We offer our questions, our sorrow, our longing, trusting that God receives what is real.

Epiphany asks not What should I do next?
But rather: What posture will help me stay awake to the light that is already here?

This attentiveness—to sound, to movement, to the faintest flicker of illumination—is the pulse of Philoxenia Life. A rhythm of hospitality that begins not with offering more, but with noticing more. Hospitality to others, yes, and also to ourselves: to our grief, our limits, our becoming.

Philoxenia names a way of making room—for people, for stories, for the Spirit’s quiet work. In seasons like this one, that welcome may be inward and small: tending what is tender, honoring what has been given, allowing light to arrive in its own time.

Sonoluminescence invites this posture. It reminds us that when we listen deeply enough—to our lives, to the earth, to those we love, to the God who moves through all of it—light can still emerge. Not loud. Not lasting perhaps. But real. And enough for the next step.

Perhaps the star is not only in the sky.
Perhaps it is already flickering within.