These words were copied into my Goody Book (a big old “commonplace book” in which, for many years, I have copied out words that have stimulated and challenged me); I wrote down these words a long time ago, and where they came from or who wrote them I don’t remember. Who were the magi? The magicians, the three Wise Men who came from far away to bring gifts to the child Jesus?
My bishop suggested that they were alchemists, and that when they brought their gifts they were giving Jesus their magic. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh are all part of the alchemical ingredients. At the time of this conversation, one of my granddaughters lent me a novel which had a lot in it about alchemy; what intrigued me especially was the suggestion that alchemists cared far more about reconciling male and female than they did about changing metal into gold.
Reconciling male and female: first, within ourselves, then, with each other. Perhaps this reconciliation was the priceless gift the magi gave to Jesus, along with the gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and it was a much greater gift than the three tangible ones. Jesus accepted the gifts, and in turn gave the greatest of the gifts to us. In a world where women were far less than second-class citizens, he chose women for his closest friends—Mary of Magdala, Mary and Martha of Bethany. He spoke to a Samaritan woman at a well, breaking three taboos: Men did not speak publicly to women, most certainly not to a Samaritan woman, and no good Jew would at that time have taken water from a Samaritan. Samaritans worshipped God differently from the Jews; they even worshipped on the wrong mountain. They were far more suspect than people from a different denomination. They did not belong. The woman at the well was awed by the gifts Jesus gave her, even the gift of loving acceptance. In her brokenness, she was able to receive the reconciliation of Jesus’ healing.
In his living, his speaking, his action, Jesus offered the world the reconciliation the Wise Men had brought to him as their greatest gift and, alas, the world could not accept it then, and still, today, cannot. We are still part of that brokenness that split us asunder eons ago in the garden.
Is it not likely that if Adam and Eve had known how to wait, had trusted God’s timing, at the right moment God would have come to them? God would have come to them saying, “Here, children, here is the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. You’re ready for it. Eat.”
But the serpent tempted them to be impatient, to break time, to rush into graduate school physics courses and depth psychology before they’d learned how to read.
Perhaps at the right moment God would have called Adam and Eve, saying, “The time has come for you to leave the safety of this beautiful garden where you have learned all that you can learn in this place. It is time for you to go out into the rest of the world.” It would have been somewhat like the mother bird urging the fledglings out of the nest when they’re ready to fly. But Adam and Eve weren’t yet ready to fly, and we’ve been lumbering about on the ground ever since.
Of course, that is a story, but it’s a story that works for me, and one reason stories are icons for us human beings is that they are our best way of struggling to comprehend the incomprehensible. We do not know why our psyches are out of sync, but the story of Adam and Eve gives us creative glimpses.
When Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am,” he did us no favor, but further fragmented us, making us limit ourselves to the cognitive at the expense of the imaginative and the intuitive. But each time we read the Gospels we are offered anew this healing reconciliation, and, if we will, we can accept the most wondrous gift of the magi.
My icon is the glory of the heavens at night, a cold, clear night when the stars are more brilliant than diamonds. The Wise Men looked at the stars, and what they saw called them away from their comfortable dwellings and toward Bethlehem. When I look at the stars, I see God’s glory in the wonder of creation.
The stars can become idols when we look to them for counsel, which should come only from God. For the magi, astronomy and astrology were one science, and it is probably a very sad thing that they ever became separated.
That is yet another schism which looks for healing, and we have not been as wise as the three magi who came from their far corners of the world, seeking the new King, the king who was merely a child. Surely if the world is as interdependent as the discoveries of particle physics imply, then what happens among the stars does make a difference to our daily lives. But the stars will not and should not tell us the future. They are not to be worshipped. Like the Wise Men, we no longer bring presents to the moon and the stars, for this Child made the moon and the stars. Alleluia!
Joy
We are moving soberly toward the new year, joy for an anguished world.
For Dana
The end of the year is here. We are at a new beginning.
A birth has come, and we reenact
At its remembrance the extraordinary fact
Of our unique, incomprehensible being.
The new year has started, for moving and growing.
The child’s laugh within and through the adult’s tears,
In joy and incomprehension at the singing years
Pushes us into fresh life, new knowing.
Here at the end of the year comes the year’s springing.
The falling and melting snow meet in the stream
That flows with living waters and cleanses the dream.
The reed bends and endures and sees the dove’s winging.
Move into the year and the new time’s turning
Open and vulnerable and loving and steady.
The stars are aflame; creation is ready.
The day is at hand: the bright sun burns.
Saying Yes
One New Year’s Eve I was allowed, for the first time, to stay up with my parents until midnight. I remember only one thing about that milestone: While the village clock was striking twelve, Father opened his small new engagement diary for the year, and we all signed our names in it. It was Father’s way of saying Yes to Mother and to me and to the new year, no matter what it might bring. It would have been much easier for him to withdraw from it, as he occasionally withdrew from the pain with whiskey, but he refused to withdraw, and I knew this without understanding it in the least, and was grateful as I added my signature to Mother’s and his.
Joyful in the newness of the heart
January 7, 1979
Joyful in the newness of the heart,
Astonished by love’s blazing light,
Making an end to a new start,
Early to smile, swift & bright.
Singing His love, all night, all night.
Peace in the midst of chaos comes
Alert & lively, he’s on the ready.
Remarkable, hearing different drums,
keeps open, & waiting, & steady.
Surely, surely the depths he plumbs
May the new year bring love, bring peace,
On the Close, the Cathedral, the loving heart
Ready for angels, looking for light,
Thinking of others, that pain may cease,
Often in prayer, by day, by night
Nurtured in love: may his joy increase!
A Winter’s Walk
There is enough ground cover of snow to provide traction, and I have on good hiking boots. The dogs rush ahead, double back, rush ahead again. Once we are into the woods, the wind drops and it is less cold. We get to the stone bridge over the brook, which is still running under its icy edges despite the subfreezing weather. To the right of the brook is the first and smaller of two remarkable beaver dams. We follow around the rim of the frozen pond to the larger dam, an amazing feat of engineering. The pond gleams silver. The winter light slants through the trees. We don’t talk much, except to remark on some particular beauty or other—the light on the icicles near the first dam, a small bird’s nest in a
low cleft of a tree.
Then we tramp home to make cocoa and warm our toes. And think a little about the past year. There has been considerable personal grief. It has not been a good year for many of our friends. For the planet it has been an astounding year. The world events that shared the news with Hurricane Bob when I was first home from the hospital in San Diego have continued to accelerate. There is no more Soviet Union. The communist religion has gone down the drain with unprecedented rapidity. The bitter fighting between Serbs and Croats continues, the differences in religion making the fight more anguished.
What will happen in the next year is far from clear.
The Gift of Christ
Instead of being allowed to grieve for the precariousness of all life, we are often taught to look for a security that does not exist. No one can promise that we will end a day in safety, that we, or someone dear to us, will not be hurt.
All too often we fall for it and go into debt to buy the latest gadget. Whatever it is, it’s made to self-destruct after a few years, and it will never help whatever it is that’s making us hurt.
What does help? The gift of Christ, who offers us the grieving that is healing. This kind of grieving is a gift; it helps us “Walk that lonesome valley.” It involves a lifelong willingness to accept the gift, which is part of what Bonhoeffer called costly grace.
We were bought with a price, and what has cost God so much cannot be cheap for us.
The search for grace, costly grace, involves the acceptance of pain and the creative grief which accompanies growth into maturity. Don’t be afraid the pain will destroy the wholeness. It leads, instead, to the kind of wholeness that rejoices in Resurrection.
We live in a time where costly grace is what makes life bearable; more than bearable—joyful and creative, so that even our grief is part of our partnership in co-creation with God.
The world around us is full of racial tension; the problems of starvation across the globe grow greater with each year; the planet is still torn apart by war; the result of our technocratic affluence is an earth depleted, an air polluted, and a population suffering from more mental illness, suicide, and despair than our country has ever known. So perhaps we finally have to accept that the great do-it-yourself dream hasn’t worked, and we’ve been dreaming wrong, dreaming nightmares. The original dream had to do with a wholeness which touched every part of our lives, including grief, and it had to do with grace, costly grace.
Moving Toward Lent
It is still winter. Today has seen a quick flurry of snow followed by blue skies and sunshine. We are moving toward Lent and then the glory of Easter, that most marvelous holy day that radiantly bursts through the limitations of fact.
All Heaven with its power*
Lord Jesus, in this fateful hour
I place all Heaven with its power
And the sun with its brightness
And the snow with its whiteness
And the fire with all the strength it hath
And the lightning with its rapid wrath
And the winds with their swiftness along their path
And the sea with its deepness
And the rocks with their steepness
And the child in the manger
Sharing our danger
And the man sandal-shod
Revealing our God
And the hill with its cross
To cry grief, pain, and loss
And the dark empty tomb
Like a Heavenly womb
Giving birth to true life
While death howls in strife
And the bread and the wine
Making human divine
And the stars with their singing
And cherubim winging
And Creation’s wild glory
Contained in His story
And the hope of new birth
On this worn stricken earth
And His coming, joy-streaming
Creation redeeming
And the earth with its starkness
All these we place
By God’s Almighty Help and grace
Between ourselves and the powers of darkness.
* This poem is based on and incorporates “The Rune of St. Patrick.”
Prayers for Peace
We send you all our prayers for peace in our hearts and in the world, for an end to terrorism and famine, and for the birth of hope and loving connections among all people.
CELEBRATION
Let us, seeing, celebrate
The glory of Love’s incarnate birth
And sing its joy to all the world.
—from “Love’s incarnate birth”
Love’s incarnate birth
Observe and contemplate.
Make real. Bring to be.
Because we note the falling tree
The sound is truly heard.
Look! The sunrise! Wait—
It needs us to look, to see,
To hear, and speak the Word.
Observe and contemplate
The cosmos and our little earth.
Observing, we affirm the worth
Of sun and stars and light unfurled.
So, let us, seeing, celebrate
The glory of Love’s incarnate birth
And sing its joy to all the world.
Observe and contemplate.
Make real. Affirm. Say Yes,
And in this season sing and bless
Wind, ice, snow; rabbit and bird;
Comet, and quark; things small and great.
Oh, observe and joyfully confess
The birth of Love’s most lovely Word.
Most amazing Word
Thank you, God, for being born,
You who first invented birth
(Universe, galaxies, the earth).
When your world was tired & worn
You came laughing on the morn.
Thank you, most amazing Word
For your silence in the womb
Where there was so little room
Yet the still small voice was heard
Throughout a planet dark & blurred.
Merry Christmas! Wondrous day!
Maker of the universe,
You the end, & you the source
Come to share in human clay
And, yourself, to show the Way.
First coming
He did not wait till the world was ready,
till men and nations were at peace.
He came when the Heavens were unsteady,
and prisoners cried out for release.
He did not wait for the perfect time.
He came when the need was deep and great.
He dined with sinners in all their grime,
turned water into wine. He did not wait
till hearts were pure. In joy he came
to a tarnished world of sin and doubt.
To a world like ours, of anguished shame
he came, and his Light would not go out.
He came to a world which did not mesh,
to heal its tangles, shield its scorn.
In the mystery of the Word made Flesh
the Maker of the stars was born.
We cannot wait till the world is sane
to raise our songs with joyful voice,
for to share our grief, to touch our pain,
He came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!
Gratitude
New Year’s Eve was very quiet, just Bion and Laurie and me. Laurie was on call, so we went to bed early and I turned out my light about midnight. I made no resolutions, which, like Lenten re
solves, are best looked at lightly. I thanked God that we’ve had the strength to get through this year, which has been very hard on almost all the people I love best. I prayed for the world. The best way to help the world is to start by loving each other, not blandly, blindly, but realistically, with understanding and forbearance and forgiveness. I’m very proud of those closest to me, for their dignity, courage, forbearance. I am grateful indeed for my friends, who go on bravely keeping the stars in their courses. I pray for those who have joined the mighty cloud of witnesses.
Such Smallness
Particle physics has a sense of the absolute significance of the very small, the so incredibly small we can’t even imagine such smallness.
In Particles, Michael Chester writes, “Not only does [the neutrino] have zero charge, it has zero mass. The neutrino is a spinning little bit of nothingness that travels at the speed of light.”
I love that! A spinning little bit of nothingness! It so delights me that I wrote a Christmas song about it.
The neutrino and the unicorn
Danced the night that Christ was born.
A spinning little bit of nothingness
that travels at the speed of light
an unseen spark of somethingness
is all that can hold back the night.
The tiny neutron split in two,
an electron and a proton form.
Where is the energy that is lost?
Who can hold back the impending storm?
Cosmic collapse would be the cost.
A spinning nothing, pure and new,
The neutrino comes to heal and bless.
The neutrino and the unicorn
danced the night that Christ was born.
The sun is dim, the stars are few,
Miracle on 10th Street Page 9
