Carnett: Do you have fleeting moments of bliss?

Have you ever experienced a euphoric, transcendental moment?

I speak of an indescribable endorphin-induced (or not) reverie. Measured in microseconds, it leaves a soul momentarily awash in feelings of bliss.

Clearly, our society’s response to this is: “You’re crackers, mate!”

Yet, I’ve encountered such a state of sublimity a time or two and am hard-pressed to understand its origin or purpose. But it tells me something.

First, let me describe the phenomenon: You’re sitting in your car awaiting a traffic light and gazing at nothing in particular when, zingo, you’re assaulted by a thought so pleasant that for an instant you’re bathed in unrestrained goodness. It’s not a rational thought to be explicated. It’s more like a fragrance.

And for an existential moment you feel complete.

Some might label it a manifestation of an inner longing. Others would attribute it to a premonition.

C.S. Lewis called it “a stab of joy.” I like that.

“We are all exiles, always longing for home,” wrote Timothy Keller, a 21st century writer and apologist in the Lewis style. “We are always traveling, never arriving. The houses and families we actually inhabit are only inns along the way, but they aren’t home. Home continues to evade us.”

Perhaps what I encounter in these “ephemerals” (my term) is a glimpse at an unfettered and eternal reality for which I’m hard-wired to yearn. Maybe it’s my true home.

About the physical feeling, permit me to draw an imperfect parallel: Think of that first jolt of morning joe that crosses your lips at 6:45 a.m. It hits your stomach and rockets with paroxysms of caffeinated rapture into your cerebral cortex. Within milliseconds, your synapses are firing.

That injection of insane clarity describes the feeling of an ephemeral.

Unfortunately, nothing in this world lasts. I did nothing to summon the “ephem” (my shorthand), yet, voila, there it is!

And then? Gone in a flash.

David Miller, in his book “AWOL on the Appalachian Trail,” describes such an episode. His experience was triggered during a hike in the mountains of New Hampshire.

“The setting (evoked) spontaneous elation,” he wrote, describing “a sudden feeling of overwhelming goodness, rightness, optimism, happiness, and eagerness for being where I am, involved in what I am doing.”

Spontaneous, not contrived. It’s a single event, a perfect wave breaking on an isolated beach.

And after encountering this gem, I queried myself: “Why did I feel so good for no apparent reason?” String a number of these moments together and who knows what you might have.

But, alas, I suspect stringing them together is out of the question. The ultimate designer, perhaps, offers us glimpses into something attainable –- and eternal — but for the moment inaccessible.

Lewis, in his classic work “Mere Christianity,” commented on human longings that go unfulfilled.

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world,” Lewis reasoned.

The Parkinson’s disease, with which I’ve wrestled for nine years, threatens at times to become the baddest, meanest, most dominant voice in my world.

I strive mightily to quell it.

Parkinson’s brings me occasional bouts of frustration and angst. I go to considerable lengths to avoid becoming obsessed about the future. For the record, Parkinson’s does not offer happy endings.

But who doesn’t face uncertainty?

I’ve discovered a means for stilling life’s Leviathan. I’ve accepted the fact that I don’t run the universe. I depend upon the one who holds creation together. I choose to submit to him.

When I’m running on empty, he’s promised to fill my tank.

“We are not living in a prison-universe,” advised Catholic writer Michael O’Brien in his book “Sophia House.” “We live in a cosmos that has open doors and windows. Messages from the infinite enter here from time to time. Perhaps all the time, and we are blind to them.”

Ephemerals too?

The eternal one reaches out to us. The choice to respond is ours.

JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.