The Beckonings of Epiphany

NOTE: Epiphany is the Christian holy day which marks the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus. It is traditionally celebrated 12 days after Christmas on January 6th. Many churches celebrate Epiphany liturgically on the second Sunday after Christmas – which is Jan. 2 in 2011.
Readings: Isaiah 60:1-6 ~ Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6 ~ Matthew 2:1-12

I chuckle as I think of how my husband and I decorate the house and the yard during the Advent and Christmas seasons. My husband practices no religion (as it's conventionally understood), but he still loves Christmas decorations. Me, I can take them or leave them. With no children in the house, I’m more prone to keep things at a minimal level when it comes to decorations: perhaps some nice candles or a small and simple indoor nativity scene. My husband prefers the whole she-bang: Christmas tree, stockings, lights on the house, a wreath on the door, Rudolph in the VCR, and so on. He used to put a lit up Santa and reindeer out in the front yard, until one year, after I mentioned in passing how much I loved the story of the Magi. He then went out and found a set of three lit-up Kings, along with a bright guiding Bethlehem star that hangs from the pepper tree, and now they grace our yard every year, from the day after Thanksgiving until the feast of the Epiphany in early January. Initially, my husband would even shift the position of the Three Kings a little each day, bringing them a little closer to the star bit by bit, night after night …

Epiphany is my favorite part of Christmas.

The story of the Magi, the Wise Men, the Journeying Seekers, speaks to me metaphorically and archetypally. I love the popular image of the Kings riding their tall dromedaries over the vast desert sands, always under a clear night sky, with a guiding star in the distance. They bring gold – a precious metal signifying purity, frankincense – a temple incense that blesses, and myrrh – a balm traditionally used to heal the wounds of childbirth. (This suggests that their gifts were for both the infant Christ as well as the mother of Christ, the God-bearer.) They travel long and far in the darkness, bringing with them treasures that symbolize purity of heart, affirmation, and healing. When they present these gifts before the baby Jesus – with the desert night and all of nature witnessing – it seems to me that they are offering up their love and the depths of their yearning in the face of a vulnerable, freshly-born awareness. And doesn’t far-travelled wisdom know best how to honor the tender, the humble, the sprout that is yet to bloom?

After encountering the infant Jesus, the Kings return home, empty-handed but full-hearted, by a different route. This is suggestive of metanoia or transformation – but it is not only the long-journeying seekers themselves who are changed. Christ – that light, that new awareness -- is affected as well. According to the story, the Magi’s recognition that they must not return the way they came – through the land of the murder-seeking King Herod-- saves the life of the infant Jesus. Wisdom knows it must protect this new and humbly-born “king”– enabling him to grow and mature to the point where he too will enter the desert, and yearn, and seek. And, like a far-traveled Wise One, he will eventually offer his gifts, his healing, his life to a world that is yet to be ….

I love this story. I do not embrace it as literally true or as historically accurate. I celebrate it as a living, ever-evolving spiritual fable that offers a treasure-box of beckonings and challenges. Here are some Epiphany-inspired questions / musings worth considering as food for thought and prayer and practice:

What is my guiding star? What guideposts, signs, dream messages, intuitive inklings, traditions, teachings, have I come to trust? Will I allow my trust to deepen and lead me on a long journey through deserts and darkness to a place I have never been?

Upon arrival (or a new return) to this place, what gifts might I offer up to God-among-us and to the Christ-bearer? Gold, representing purity of heart, might manifest as devotional consistency; a renewal of a daily prayer or meditative practice; the experience of deprivation to provide for another; teaching prisoners creative writing; secret tithing; a compassionate action that is not self-aggrandizing or attached to public approval or outcome. Frankincense, representing blessing, could reveal itself as an offering of unsolicited validation or affirmation to another; being a source of confirmation for another; a welcoming smile to the stranger in the supermarket; allowing fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, etc.) to flow through my being and out to those whose paths I cross. Myrrh, the healing balm, could emerge as being present at the right time and right place with life-giving support; providing nourishment, medicine, therapy, or shelter for another; a good long hug; listening deeply to others with an open heart; being a messenger of transformative news for someone; planting organic vegetables; beginning a process of forgiveness and reconciliation with someone.

In what way(s) has Christ been born in me and through me? What are the fresh revelations and awarenesses in my life that need my attention, my safeguarding, and my persistently loving care? Am I tending well to the Incarnation, to the body of Christ, to the living God and the Christ-bearer within myself and others? Do I recognize the Herods in my life, and know not to return to the places and activities that threaten to destroy those aspects of Christ within me that have freshly sprouted?

You may see other invitations and insights from the Epiphany story. (I would love to hear them if you'd like to share). Here is part of the gospel reading that is traditionally read on Epiphany Sunday in many churches. May your wisdom follow the star that guides. Happy New Year!

…Herod called the magi secretly and ascertained from them the time of the star’s appearance. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search diligently for the child. When you have found him, being me word, that I too may go and do him homage.” After their audience with the king they set out. And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was. They were overjoyed at seeing the star, and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for their country by another way.

                   --Matthew 2: 7-12

Loveliness!

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse from William Castleman on Vimeo.

Running with Mary: My Thing for the BVM

I came across Jane Russell Simins' fresh and feisty personal reflection on the Blessed Virgin Mary in the November/December 1997 issue of the Utne Reader. It was originally printed in the Spring/Summer edition of Bust magazine. I'm sharing it here in honor of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, which the Catholic church celebrates today. A pretty unorthodox stance, here, "but as the BVM might point out," notes Simins, "it takes all kinds."

My fave goddess is pretty traditional: the Blessed Virgin Mary, the BVM for short. She gets a bad rap – spokesgirl for virginity, poster-child for Catholic-boy Madonna/whore mind games – but I think of her as a mystical, pro-choice badass, and one of my best buddies. Even if you’re not religious (or even if you’re antireligious), her story can be seen as being about trusting yourself, and it’s one of the best feisty girl stories of all time.

I first heard about the BVM in church – Baptist church – and to Baptists she is known more simply as the Virgin Mary, although they don’t explain to little kids what virgin means.

I was immediately suspicious of her, because everybody knows Catholics worship Mary* and thus have a good shot at going to hell. (Those Madonna and Child stamps at Christmas always drew little “hmphs” from my grandmother). But, there she was, right in Luke, chapter 2, so they had to talk about her in church.

My next contact with the BVM and Catholics (I didn’t actually meet a Catholic until I was 10 – welcome to the South) was in Little Women, where Amy stays with Aunt March and meets her French maid. Now, there are lots of things young Amy could have learned from a French maid, but what she learned about was Catholicism, devotion, and piety.

Thus began my secret preadolescent fantasies about prayers and beads and confession. It seemed to me that Catholics got to be assured over and over again that they were good, and if they weren’t good they got to tell someone in secret and then it would be all better. This sounded all right to me, because my chief concern was whether or not I was good enough.

I didn’t think too much more about the BVM until I met this awesome Catholic guy (no mind games here, thank you). One night I made him whip out the rosary and give me the lowdown, and when he got to the last two glorious mysteries – Mary is bodily assumed into heaven and Mary is crowned Queen of Heaven – I laughed out loud. “Those aren’t in the Bible!” I hooted. “No,” he said. “I guess not.”

Next came my honeymoon in Italy with this same cute Catholic, where I got completely obsessed with 14^th-century paintings of the Annunciation, the scene where an angel comes to ask Mary if she’s willing to get knocked up for God (this is the pro-choice part: Mary gets to say yes or no).

In those paintings the question came out of the angel’s mouth in arcs of golden words. I was hooked. The paintings were beautiful, and they were intimate – just Mary and her fate having a little chat. I tracked them down everywhere, which wasn’t hard. I bought some postcards of the paintings and taped them up with the Frida Kahlo postcards and the Manolo Blahnik ad at my desk back home.

The BVM was brought to the forefront of my mind again in 1993, when Liz Phair sang “Help Me Mary.” My squeeze didn’t get what Mary was doing in the song, but I knew Liz’s heroine had nowhere else to turn.

           

        Help me Mary, please.

        I’ve lost my home to thieves.

       They bully the stereo and drink,

       They leave suspicious things in the sink.

Now, any girl worth her salt knows what Liz means. It’s that feeling that you’ve betrayed yourself, that the Wrong Element is in your house and running things. I’d felt that way for a long time, still wondering when and if I’d ever be really good.

The Wrong Element had made me nice and pliant and completely unsure of myself. I thought I was too ugly, too fat, too sarcastic, too selfish, and too immoral to be fit company for anybody. Except the Catholic husband and some cool girlfriends. And, finally, the BVM.

Last summer I got really curious about the BVM, mainly because I felt like she was talking to me (not out loud, thank God). I wanted to learn more about her, and about how Catholics think about her, since they’ve sort of cornered the market on Mary. Her story’s really simple: She risked ostracism to do what she felt (and what God via Gabriel told her) was the right thing to do. It was not the nice thing, the acceptable thing, or the correct thing.

The story of the BVM divorces goodness from niceness forever, which was just what I needed to do at the time, and is probably why she and I started holding all these conversations.

My image of Mary is pretty personal. Sometimes she’s Marmee from Little Women: She can see into my heart and help me to be true to my own nature. Sometimes she’s like Samantha from Bewitched, distracting people who are potential dangers to me, like helping the swervy driver in front of me onto an exit ramp.

Sometimes she’s Jackie Onassis, dressed to kill and drawing too much attention, like when she showed up at Lourdes and got Bernadette in big trouble. (If Manolo Blahnik designed something like those rose-feet Mary wore at Lourdes they’d be sold out until the second coming.)

She was a hussy (getting to tell her fiancé she was pregnant before he even got a peek at her), a nag (“Jesus, these people are at a wedding! Whip up some wine!”) and a renegade, giving birth in the barn and aiding and abetting her son, an enemy of the government. But best of all, she listened to those golden words and said yes.

When you’re busy being nice and docile, like I was, you can’t hear anything but whether or not your good behavior is earning you points. If Mary had been a good girl she wouldn’t have had the guts to say yes to the golden words. She would have been afraid Joseph would leave her, or that her family would disown her.

To me that’s what liberation is all about: giving yourself permission to figure out what your calling is, instead of obeying everyone who wants to decide it for you.

Going for it, I finally decided to become Catholic, but even though I take advantage of the good points – those little medals with clear blue BVMs on them, the priest at my church with a degree in psychology – I figure I don’t have to buy the whole package.

I’m not sure the church would have been so interested in me if they knew I was going to stay pro-choice, to champion Mary as an early riot grrrl, to advocate for women priests and birth control, but as the BVM might point out, it takes all kinds.

Since I come from a long line of good girls, martyrs, and rule-keepers, I learned only people-pleasing goodness. Catholicism, at least my brand of it, helps with the internal, spiritual BVM kind of goodness that helps girls follow their hearts and turn into amazing women. Into goddesses, even. 

--Jane Russell Simins, from Bust (Spirng/Summer 1997). 

*This is a common misconception. Catholics may venerate and honor Mary, asking that she intercede with her son on humanity's behalf. This is not the same as worship, which is reserved for God alone.

Island of Misfit Toys

My husband called me from work yesterday evening to announce that he was scurrying to get home in time for the annual airing of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

Mind you – we actually own the video – that special restored version with added footage not included in the original – which means that we can view this classic holiday story anytime we’d like. But we typically watch it when it re-airs each year on a major television network, usually in the middle of the week after Thanksgiving. It’s one of those paradoxes of technology: for us, owning a video means that there’s a greater than 50 percent chance that it gets watched only once before it spends the remainder of its life inside its container, collecting dust on a shelf. (Which is why we own just a few videos and DVDs. And this may also be an inevitable part of life in a childless household.)

But there’s this odd impetus to watch this particular show when it airs on national TV, when we know millions of others will be seeing it. It’s some kind of communal yearning – a desire to experience a beloved tale collectively. A need to be swept up with others – even unknown others -- in some current of mutuality. Perhaps, even, some subterranean tribal echo. But these days, rather than gathering in groups around a fire to listen to elder-told fables, we sit in front of movie and television screens, communally accepting an invitation to briefly set aside our own lives and, together, fall under the spell of Story.

I admit, however, that this story’s spell spins a little thinly at points.

Santa, for example, is a complete asshole. When he meets the infant Rudolph and sees his shiny nose, the first thing he can think of to say is “great blithering icebergs! He’d better grow out of that red nose if he expects to join my sleigh team some day.” (Because apparently a natural source of bright light on a high-flying sleigh in December darkness would just be ... terribly gauche). This is Kris Kringle, jolly ole St. Nick, giver of secret gifts? I think not. He’s grumpy, small-minded, and easily dissatisfied. Not someone I want as a judge of whether I’ve been naughty or nice. Not someone whose lap I’d want to sit on and whisper my Christmas wishes to. And Santa’s right-hand man, the bombastic elf-overseer, never has an encouraging word to say to the elf laborers, who, as far as I can tell, sing perfectly harmonized songs and make perfectly delightful toys. Well – except for those occasions where someone slips up and builds a train with square wheels or a watergun that squirts grape jelly. Did somebody overspike the eggnog, or were those misfit toys actually the products of elfin sabotage? Perhaps instigated by Hermie, who didn’t want to be a toymaker anyway? We’ll never know. But of this I am certain: we gotta get that Santa fired.

And, okay: What was that lion King Moonracer thinking when he suggested to the wandering Misfit gang (Rudolph, Hermie, and Yukon Cornelius) that they should return to Christmastown and tell Santa about all those unwanted misfit toys on that island? Moonracer seems to presume that big-hearted Santa will be eager to find a home for all those freaky toys. But this is the same Santa who rejected baby Rudolph because of his red nose. This is same Santa who does not know or care that poor Rudolph ran away after all of the other reindeer laughed, called him names, and kicked him out of their reindeer games (except for lovely Clarisse, who sees the splendid buck beyond the shiny nose). How can K.M. be so sure that a diplomatic plea from the Misfit gang will work with this feckless, thoughtless Santa?

And – one more thing -- why, oh why, does Yukon Cornelius have a professionally-groomed toy poodle and a pug on his dogsled team?  Only one dog, the St. Bernard, seems capable of dragging that big lug around. That’s the real reason why the sled keeps gliding when Cornelius yells (and re-yells) “Whoooaaa!” Simple inertia.

So, yes: Christmastown and its leaders are deeply flawed. But at heart, of course, Rudolph is a sweetly radical story. I was irresistibly drawn to it as a child. As a member of a multicolored family living in a deeply segregated city in the 1960s, I completely sympathized with the ostracized Rudolph and the dentally-aspiring Hermie. As an adopted biracial child, I recognized that I had also come from an Island of Misfit Toys. I was one of the unwanted sad beings rejected for who knows why, not fitting into any neat and tidy category, hard to place in a permanently loving home. I imagine that anyone who was shunned, despised, mocked, or bullied as a child for any reason feels warmly vindicated when it turns out that the very attribute that pegged one as a misfit is the necessary talent, the saving grace, the workable solution to a major quandary. Rudolph and his misfit allies represent any of us who were sneered at for being disabled, odd-looking, gay, unexpected, alien, a member of a minority religion, too quiet, too outspoken, hyperactive, freethinking, nonconformist, perplexed, bookish etc., etc., . . . so many red noses in this world. So many Charlie-in-the-Boxes and swimming birds and ostrich-riding cowboys. Probably enough to populate an entire Archipelago of Misfit Toys, when you think about it.

Which is a good thing, because it seems this world is having more than its expected share of blowout winter blizzards lately. We need boatloads of red-nosed reindeers and upstart elf dentists and tree-decorating monster snowmen working in concert to prep and guide Santa’s sleigh tonight, people! The message of Rudolph reaches beyond the mere celebration of individuality. It invites us to pool our various quirkinesses together in some fashion so that gifts and graces will fall from the sky and feed the world. So please: love your freakishness. Bless your streak of bad-assedness. Be patient with what you think of as your flaws. Cradle that part of you that has a ridiculous and seemingly unreachable dream. Be kind to your thunder thighs, because where there’s thunder, there’s lightning. There are gifts lurking inside your awkwardness and disconcerting distinctiveness. As Yukon might say, there’s gold in them thar hills.

A final thought: despite its holly-jolly secular folkstory appeal, I detect Judeo-Christian undertones in the Rudolph story. Like Moses and like Jesus, isn’t Rudolph an unexpected child, a spurned and rejected one, a suffering servant whose life turns out to be a path in the desert and a light in the darkness? Isn’t Rudolph the “stone the builders rejected” who “become(s) the cornerstone?” (Psalm 118: 22).

Perhaps I overplay these interweavings and resonances. But I can’t help it -- the misfit in me seems to have    . . . a nose for such things.