The Feast of Epiphany marks the visit of the three Magi to the baby Jesus, bringing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. But we also use the word “epiphany” to describe a sudden understanding, a moment when we grasp something that we never understood before.
When have you received the gift of an epiphany?
My biggest epiphany occurred when I began to study materials from the Harvard Negotiation Project. I learned that the combative, posturing way the men in my profession negotiated, and wanted me to negotiate, indeed their very definition or concept of negotiation, was counterproductive. Taking a scientific approach, the HNP had shown that a collaborative approach, much more comfortable for me as a woman, actually got me more of what I needed from others. It changed my life so much that I felt called to share what I had learned. I augmented what I had learned at Harvard with other sources, and in time, phased out my former profession to start my second career teaching, writing and consulting about consensus building.
I too found that during my professional career(s), especially during committee meetings, males were less willing to arrive at a consensus of opinion, that is a real solution to the problem at hand. Reality to me means that the participants are obligated to “find” that solution which will move the planning ahead, even though ultimately the result may cancel the plan.
When I worked as a community development worker with the newly formed Peace Corps in Arequipa, Peru, from1962-64, I was unsure of what would result with the Peace Corps, and frankly, I didn’t really think of what would happen to me as a result. We were the early Peru
Three group and because of unrest in the Peruvian government at the time, after training, we were instructed to wait back at home, in the States, until the invitation from the Peruvian government was clarified. After two months of training at Cornell university and a month of outbound training in Puerto Rico, I was still left with the impression that what I would be doing was hazy. And so it was….we arrived, located housing for ourselves in the barriadas in the hills surrounding the city where migrants from the high altiplanos had come searching a better life. Additionally, there had been two earthquakes right before we arrived and there had been damage to many of the modest dwellings there. We actually hunted for things to do: instead of working as partners with Peruvians in a specialized field (I thought I’d be paired in a school with an art teacher) , I worked on a wide variety of jobs: having a crafts class in an unused school building; helping another PCV in teaching art and music in nursery school style to young pre-school age children ; visiting one on one with Peruvian neighbors; working with other PCVs on teaching people how to use left over materials to build pieces of furniture to improve their home life (one volunteer designed a play pen since babies were generally placed on the ground, playing there); working with a group to improve the home manufacture of machine woven llama and alpaca sweaters in sizing and design that would be saleable overseas; assisting at a University where one of our volunteers, a chemist, who was uncertain about teaching a lecture course in Spanish, needed a translator (I used my best vocabulary in Spanish somewhat as a cook, “You blend this element with…., and stir it together in a pot….!?);’ teaching elementary English at a hospital so that staff could begin to understand the instructions that came (in English) to assemble and use incubators, for instance: well, you get the idea. However, the major project that I engaged in was establishing a library for youth in my small room where every week the barriada children would come and read “reference books” sent by US friends as well as check out paper backs , such as Classic Comics (Abraham Lincoln, Christopher Columbus, etc.). We actually had story time, too and were invited to be a “show” on a local TV station where we talked about how the library worked and I read Curious George in Spanish for “story hour”. So, what happened to me? The surprise: when I came back to the States, I worked several years again as an art teacher and gained a Master’s in the field but abruptly, decided that I wanted to be a youth librarian. Result: worked in a metropolitan public library for 5 years; received a grant to obtain a Master’s Degree in Library Science and then continued in the field as the Children’s and Young Adult’s statewide Consultant for the Missouri State Library, influencing many professional as well as non-professional librarians in the field. I also was chosen to be a member of an American Library Association Newbery Award Committee to help chose the best written book for youth of that year. This is what I choose to call an epiphany that affected my life in an extremely impressive way. Eager children in Peru brought me to the place whereby I realized the need for more US children to have opportunities in learning the value of public libraries in our own country.