Theophany

theophany (thee-OF-uh-nee) noun

An appearance of a god to a person.

[From Medieval Latin theophania, from Late Greek theophaneia, from Greek
theo- (god) + -phaneia (to show).]

"Any mundane reality could yield a theophany, if approached with reverent imagination: a place, a rock, a tree, a man or a woman."
Karen Armstrong; Divinity and Gender: a God For Both Sexes; The Economist (London, UK); Dec 21, 1996.

Thanks to Word a Day

Wow, Karen shore has the imagination, though we wonders about the reverent part of it.
But wait, when I look at the definition again "the appearance of a god ..." I would have to agree that she is right. It is true, people will make a god out of anything. So why is that true? I found Isaac Asimov interesting in one of his books. Religion was used to get started recreating an empire, but it was displaced by prudent use of economic clout. Isaac is not the only one to use religion so, and in fact I am sure that religion in the real world has been used for all sorts of things. But why is the common person taken in by it? Why is superstition so rampent throught the world? And no I do not believe that knowledge and education superceede superstition, not for a little tiny bit of time do I. IQ and knowledge and education do not make a person any less superstitious, they just change the plain of the function of it.
If we say that a theophany is "an appearance of God to a person" then Karen is way far off. Too bad most of the world missed the greatest theophany of all, Jesus.