Non-epiphany (1876aedc)

Non-epiphany is Terry Kitchen’s term for a brief release from the constant pressure of existence: a moment when God lets go, and a person is left to be human. The concept begins in Rabo Karabekian’s recollection of contentment after an intimate encounter with Marilee Kemp, but Kitchen’s definition reverses the usual sense of an epiphany. Instead of a rare divine revelation, the extraordinary event is a short reprieve from what Kitchen imagines as God’s nearly continuous hold on everyone.

The expression and its origins

After the war, Rabo tells Kitchen that three hours of lovemaking with Marilee had left him feeling contentedly adrift in the cosmos. Kitchen names the experience a “non-epiphany,” then explains that he has invented the concept. At the time, Kitchen is still a talker rather than a painter; Rabo, too, describes himself as a talker and a painters’ groupie, still expecting to become a businessman. The term thus arises in a conversation between two men whose later identities as artists have not yet taken shape.

Kitchen’s explanation turns on a reversal. The problem with God, he says, is not that God seldom makes himself known, but that God is holding everyone by the scruff of the neck almost constantly. He has just visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where paintings show God giving instructions to Adam and Eve, the Virgin Mary, and saints in agony. Such scenes are conventionally treated as rare epiphanies, but Kitchen argues that painters’ accounts of divine encounter should not be taken at face value. In his account, revelation is common; what is rare is the moment when divine pressure relents.

A reprieve rather than a revelation

Kitchen applies his definition directly to Rabo’s experience. He repeats Rabo’s description of being contentedly adrift and calls it a non-epiphany: the rare interval when God lets go and permits someone to be human for a little while. Asked how long the feeling lasted, Rabo estimates about half an hour. The disproportion between the three-hour encounter and the shorter afterglow gives the concept its modest scale: it does not promise lasting transformation, only a temporary easing of life’s grip.

The distinction also changes how the word “epiphany” works. Museum paintings make divine communication visible as a remarkable event, while Kitchen’s term directs attention to an unremarkable-seeming absence: no instruction, revelation, or demand, just a pause in being held. He speaks with the confidence of an inventor naming a phenomenon, though his definition remains grounded in Rabo’s specific, fleeting feeling rather than in a general religious doctrine.

Kitchen’s own rare moments

A later account narrows the concept through Kitchen’s personal experience. He says the only moments he ever experienced as non-epiphanies were those following sex and the two occasions when he took heroin. The statement makes the rarity in his definition concrete, while distinguishing his account from Rabo’s: the term is shared, but the experiences each man associates with release are not presented as identical. The evidence identifies the occasions without describing them further.

The recollection also places Kitchen’s later formulation beside his earlier role as a conversational theorist. In the original exchange, he offers a general claim about God and uses Rabo’s half-hour of relief to explain it; later, he describes the narrow limits of his own experience. The concept therefore moves between an expansive proposition about human existence and a sharply personal inventory of moments.

From temporary release to being brought back

Near the end of the narrative, Rabo invokes the Lazarus image to describe two relationships that helped him recover from loss. He says that he died with Kitchen and that Edith brought him back to life; after Edith’s death, he says, Circe Berman did the same. This is not another explicit definition of non-epiphany, but it echoes the expression’s concern with brief release and human vulnerability. The earlier image is of God loosening his grip for half an hour; the later image makes restoration depend on other people.

Together, these uses give the phrase two related but distinct dimensions. Kitchen’s definition names a temporary state in which a person is released from pressure, while Rabo’s later language describes companionship as a means of returning to life after grief. The shift does not erase the original sense or turn every act of comfort into a non-epiphany. It does, however, place the phrase within a larger pattern in which human connection offers relief where no permanent escape is promised.