Epiphany

Adoration of the Magi, painting by Sandro Botticelli

Happy Epiphany! After the wonderful 12 days of Christmas, we celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany today. We remember the wise men visiting the baby Jesus and celebrate Christ’s manifestation to the Gentiles and the world.

My favorite thing to read on this day is T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Journey of the Magi:

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times when we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities dirty and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wineskins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

 

Ponder anew

Ned and I celebrated our second anniversary this week. On the actual anniversary day, I was staking out congressmen in marble hallways in D.C., and Ned was examining documents in Honduras. Awesome. But happily, we were both able to celebrate together the weekend prior.

The first hymn in our wedding was “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty.”  It’s what Fr. Sloane calls “a real chestnut” of a hymn.  It was one of a few hymns we could find that we thought would be familiar to our friends and family from Catholic, Episcopal and Evangelical backgrounds.  In fact, it was actually the first-ever congregational hymn at my mom’s childhood Catholic church. They weren’t so much into hymn sings back in the day, but when Vatican II started to encourage more congregational singing in the 1960s, my mom’s church dutifully brought everyone in and taught them how to sing “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty.” Because it’s just that kind of hymn.

It was beautiful to hear everyone sing it so enthusiastically at our wedding. I wept.

I wept again when listening to it last weekend. But the hymn sounded very different two years later. On our wedding day, I felt like my mind and body were overflowing with the lyrics — it was a joyous, praiseworthy day. I was in awe of how God had provided for us, led us to that place and called Ned and I together.

Our marriage is still truly wonderful — but I’ve become used to a wonderful marriage, so I often forget to be thankful for it on a daily basis.

(sorry, Ned.)

(sorry, Jesus.)

Recently, I’ve been slightly prone to despair. I’ve dwelt on some of the disappointing things in my life, my friends’ lives, the world … rather than on all of the good things for which I should be so thankful. There is surely more in the “blessings” category than “disappointments.”  But it really only takes one disappointment to take over my whole brain.

Hast thou not seen? Um, yeah, sorry, I haven’t been seeing. Or trusting. Or praising.

I thought of the psalms that start with laments and end with praise, how even in hard times (and it seems that people in the Bible had MUCH harder times than me), God is faithful and worthy of praise.

“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? … My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him. ”

So, as we puttered down the road on a slightly-overcast but lovely day in Northern Virginia last weekend, I tearfully, joyfully sang along with this hymn. And I meant it.

*

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation!
O my soul, praise Him, for He is thy health and salvation!
All ye who hear, now to His temple draw near;
Praise Him in glad adoration.

Praise to the Lord
Who o’er all things so wondrously reigneth,
Shelters thee under His wings, yea, so gently sustaineth!
Hast thou not seen all that thou needest hath been
Granted in what He ordaineth?

Praise to the Lord
Who doth prosper thy work and defend thee;
Surely His goodness and mercy here daily attend thee.
Ponder anew what the Almighty can do
If with His love He befriend thee.

Praise to the Lord, O let all that is in me adore Him!
All that hath life and breath,
Come now with praises before Him.
Let the Amen sound from His people again,
Gladly forever adore Him.