The last line of Angels In America, spoken by the reluctant prophet Prior Walter, is "The great work begins." Having seen the relevant scenes a few times now, I'm still not quite sure what's meant by "the great work." Is this the same great work that's to be undertaken by James Merrill in The Changing Light at Sandover (the specific nature of which isn't described there either)? Both epics focus more on what it means to be called as a prophet and less on the content of the prophecies to be proclaimed. I suppose it's the nature of our times to be interested in psychology and emotions rather than revelation. I've been thinking about this as I've felt the coming of my own personal transformation.

As usually happens with me, my awareness of this approaching change has arisen indirectly, without my even recognizing what I've done to set it in motion. I've been withdrawn--though less in my typical mode of protective escape, and more in a mode of mindfulness. I had originally attributed this to grief, but I'm not sad. I've become a vegetarian, at least for now. I've set out to understand and describe my fundamental beliefs. My dreams, which have grown more and more vivid, coherent, and narratively extensive over the past year, seem to be verging on the resolution or revelation of something I can't quite see yet. And despite this, I'm able to sleep deeply for as long as I'd like (twelve, fourteen, perhaps twenty hours).

For the first time in my life, I feel that it's possible for me to become someone else (as opposed to myself in different circumstances). I realize that this is no clearer than Kushner's or Merrill's allusions to some vague great work. This is an emotional (or perhaps even spiritual) rather than logical process (thus my indirect awareness of it), so I haven't the words for it. But to paraphrase Homer Simpson's wish for the thongs that kept disappearing as he wore them, I hope it's going someplace good. Perhaps as Merrill and Kushner used prophecy as a means to explore and understand humanity, my exploration of my own humanity is serving as a means to gain access to revelation, or as Kierkegaard puts it:

The existing individual who chooses to pursue the objective way enters upon the entire proximation-process by which it is proposed to bring God to light objectively. But this is in all eternity impossible, because God is a subject, and therefore exists only for subjectivity in inwardness. The existing individual who chooses the subjective way apprehends instantly the entire dialectical difficulty involved in having to use some time, perhaps a long time, in finding God objectively; and he feels the dialectical difficulty in all its painfulness, because every moment is wasted in which he does not have God. That very instant he has God, not by virtue of any objective deliberation, but by virtue of the infinite passion of inwardness.

It is only through awareness of our despair, dread, and anxiety that we can experience faith. (Soon, I'll be spotted in Washington Square Park with a black hooded cape and cane...) And yet even as he suggests the way forward, Kierkegaard (a genius of irony) mocks my pretensions:

A profound religious renunciation of the world, adhered to in daily self-denial, would be unthinkable to the youth of our time; yet every second theology graduate would be virtuoso enough to do something far more marvelous: he would be able to propose a social foundation with no less a goal than to save all who are lost. The age of great and good actions is past; the present age is the age of anticipation. No one is content with doing any definite thing; everyone fondly imagines in reflection that at the least he may discover a new continent.

Just where is this "great work"?