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A Musing Amma

~ Gathering the pieces of our lives together under the eyes of the Holy

A Musing Amma

Tag Archives: Epiphany

An Epiphany Season

24 Monday Jan 2022

Posted by Elizabeth Nordquist in Epiphany, Uncategorized

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Epiphany

“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!

Longing for Light to Follow

06 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by Elizabeth Nordquist in Christmas, Epiphany, Hope, illumination, pilgrimage, wisdom

≈ 1 Comment

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discernment, Epiphany, Jesus, pilgrimage

Today is Epiphany, the daychihulyTampa 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.

In reading one of my gifts from Christmas, Alexander McCall Smith’s The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine, I saw myself reflected in Mma Precious Ramotswe’s self-reflection after her colleague suggests she might want a holiday:

Mma Ramotswe looked down at her hands, folded passively on her lap. Was she getting stale? She looked at her shoes. at her faithful brown shoes with their broad soles and their flat heels. Were these the shoes of a stale person?  (21)

My shoes are not broad, brown and flat, but  I am wondering if parts of me are stale. I do know that when I have been musing on this part of the Christmas season, my heart is lightened when I think of this part of the ancient story of Epiphany, of wisdom meeting new life, of coming into new territory, of being filled with joy. And I have a longing for some of that lightness.

I didn’t make New Year’s resolutions this year, I usually don’t. However, I did find myself praying for Light and Hope, but the prayers were nestled in vows I took long ago when I was ordained as a Minister of Word and Sacrament. In those vows I promised each time I recited them at each new call,  that I would seek to serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination and love. So my prayer this year has become that I will encounter the Star of Light that will burnish my energy, intelligence, imagination and love, so that they more shine more brightly in me and through me to the people I am given to care for. I am aware that after thirty years, each of those intentions might have become stale–or maybe are just in need of re-calibration after an encounter with the Holy One.

In this decade of my life my energy is not the same as when it needed to meet the requirements of the rhythms of life that tried to balance my calling at church or seminary, commuting, raising children, caring for aging parents and keeping loving alive. My brain does not retain new information, nor does it remember familiar facts with the facility it once did. In some ways my imagination is more lithe and fantastic than it used to be, now that I put it to use only with taking flight with grand-children or hoping for outcomes not constricted by by-laws; that one glistens more brightly. And there is love! Always the Word–the greatest of these, always coming to me from Grace. But in some places and times it has felt more taxing. Weariness in well-doing has tarnished some of that first love; or that sense that one has lived long enough to say with the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, “there is nothing new under the sun,” and it seems that no new thing to savor, to take delight in, no new face to enchant with affection.

And so my prayer on this Epiphany is that the Star will shine in me, for me and through me:

Star of Wonder, shine on and energize my body and spirit so that I can make the treks over mountains and deserts to offer who I am to those who are ready to receive me.

Star of Beauty Bright, enliven my synapses and retrieve my skill sets, so that I can continue to bring ideas and strategies to the tables of conversation and cooperation in the things that make for peace.

Star of Night, shine through my dreams so that my imagination will be further illuminated with things that my eyes have not yet seen or my ears have not heard, but that add beauty and grace to the world around me.

Star of my Heart, keep the fires of Love burning, stoked and warm, brilliant and comforting, as long as my heart will beat.

In the name of that Bright and Morning Star, Amen.

 

 

Personal photo from Dale Chihuly Center, St. Petersburg, FL.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Recent Posts

  • Lent: Lamenting in Grace March 30, 2022
  • LENT: Grace is Enough March 12, 2022
  • An Epiphany Season January 24, 2022
  • Advent IV: A Well-Lighted Wreath December 24, 2021
  • Advent III: What I Sense in Three-Quarter Light December 13, 2021

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