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“What to my wondering eyes should appear!”
I am delighted and blessed to read so widely in the faith community that Epiphany it celebrated by some as a season, not just one day! The story of the Adventuresome Wise Ones feels so apt in these days of unknowing, grayness and uncertainty.
It is such a season on unknowing, even though we had hoped for the holiday and turning the year be an actual marker of something healing, healthy and new. Instead. the Omicron phase of COVID has been invasive, disruptive and unnerving. Daily plans are upset, promises are having to be revisited, hopes deferred. And I am imagining the post-visit to the Christ child was much the same, going out without not knowing where they were going, the Wise Ones went home by a different route–did they know where they were going? what would meet them on the way? what fresh hell they would encounter? Or was it for them, as it is for us, a daily step forward, in vigilance and trust with flexibility to see how, when and if they would find their way home?
I am trying to be a Wise Wanderer this season, wondering if, at least for the duration of COVID, this is The Season–appointments written in pencil, events canceled, protocols observed, directions re-routed, expectations rearranged. As someone who likes to plan and anticipate fun and joy for the future, this is a big stretch. My grounding in sacred text is more and more deeply: THIS is the day that the Holy has made, I WILL rejoice and be glad in it!”
So today if an appointment is late in arriving, if an invitation is turned down, if yet another appliance breakdown, or another tree in the neighborhood falls over without hurting anyone, or a long awaited connecting venue is canceled, my deep call is to once again see how the Holy One is here is the surprise, and to be one who is open to the possibility off something beautiful appearing, even as it did this last week–a friendly conversation, a bank of birds of paradise guiding my way to a medical appointment, slow, but constant healing in a loved one, celebration of a great accomplishment by a grandchild, a musical arrangement that transported me in amazing grace, a faithful blogger who “gets it,” but still carries on. God’s mercies are new every morning is this season, despite politics, despite the pandemic, despite all the gloomy doom-saying pundits!
And so I invoke and inhale the Spirit of Epiphany, looking for Light, surprised by the road on which the Star led them, and flexible, more and more so, to take another road where the Hoy One leads, the invitation opening up! I am grateful to be on the surprising road! Thanks be to God!
when the Church remembers and celebrates the arrival of the wise ones who have been following the Light in the shape of a Star in the East and now have stopped over that place where the Child was. I do not envy them the journey over miles and years, but I do envy the vision and clarity of the Star that took them right to the place where their hearts longed to be.
A Musing Amma 