Consequences

After the wise men were gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up! Flee to Egypt with the child and his mother” …That night Joseph left for Egypt with the child and Mary, his mother Matthew 2: 13-14

echoes and consequences

A sudden, jarring departure : movement, urgency, adrenaline pumping. Angels giving clear instruction. Get up and go! Darkness of night, danger, no time to waste. Flee! Echoes of Israel’s flight from Egypt centuries before.

An unprepared-for wilderness journey : danger, isolation, barrenness, dust, complete vulnerability. Equally, deliverance, safety, encounter, miraculous provision. Echoes of Hagar’s flight and desert wanderings. “Have I truly seen the One who sees me?” Genesis 16: 13

A surprising, welcome refuge on the weary path : a lush tree, thick shade, flowers, fruit, hidden sources of water, oasis. An invitation to rest, refreshment, play, protection. Echoes of Eden.

Did Mary ever imagine all this when she gave her Yes! to the messenger? I am the Lord’s servant…

Did Joseph ever imagine all this when he gave his Yes! to the messenger? He took Mary as his wife…

Twists and turns, fears and joys, light and darkness. All consequences of saying a curious, whole-hearted Yes! to Life.

Questions

Using my imagination, I am invited to sit and enjoy rest with the Holy family under the desert tree.

What echoes in my heart? What signs of hope and new life do I notice?

Caroline Tyler

Desert rose in bloom, Caroline Tyler

Come, thou long expected Jesus,

born to set thy people free;

from our fears and sins release us,

let us find our rest in thee.

Israel's strength and consolation,

hope of all the earth thou art;

dear desire of every nation,

joy of every longing heart.

-Charles Wesley

We learn to journey by a different way

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.

- The Journey of the Magi, T S Eliot

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” Matthew 2: 1-2

On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route. Matthew 2: 11-12

With our hearts we recognise the map

For all who notice, and wonder if perhaps there is a journey to be made; one worth embarking on, towards an encounter barely sensed yet strangely insistent, Eliot’s words offer earnest encouragement.

Journeys like these are long and not easily planned for. Sustained by glimpses of joy they are, nevertheless, rarely comfortable and frequently costly in ways we cannot know when setting out. Attentive to the night skies and skilled in the art of star-gazing, these three (kings, perhaps, philosophers or sages, maybe) caught sight of the star when it rose and understood it was the map.

Perhaps when all is said and done, examined, misunderstood and fretted over, it is with our hearts that we recognise the map and set out to worship him.

And in time, we may also come to realise that this setting out, arriving and leaving again by another route is all worship. For the way is deep and, birthed in the mystery of our first noticing, calls for a lifetime of learning to journey by a different way.

Lights through the rain, Benjamin Sow, unsplash.com

This blessing/does not mean/to take the night away,/but it knows/its hidden roads,/knows the resting spots/along the path,/knows what it means/to travel…

So when/this blessing comes,/take its hand./Get up./Set out on the road/you cannot see.

- The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief. Jan Richardson

Lynn Darke

Return to curiosity

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him. Matthew 2:1-2

Return to Curiosity

This advent the curiosity of the Magi got me thinking about how as children we seem to somehow have permission, or give ourselves permission, and freedom, to explore the many wonders of the world - to be curious and to be free to ask questions without fear of embarrassment.

As we get older, it seems that somewhere along the line we can lose that sense of curiosity. Perhaps as adults the journey that curiosity affords us is blocked or lost. This may be out of a fear to travel with the uncertainty that such a journey can bring. To try or explore something different can bring with it a fear of failure, of getting it wrong.

The Magi’s curiosity took them on a long journey, in the dark, into the unknown, with only a star to follow. It seems to me in our spiritual walk that fear can hold us in the place of darkness, whether facing, for example, challenging health issues on a personal level or the global and political issues of today.

John 1v5 states  ‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’

It occurs to me that in the midst of darkness if we can return to curiosity once more, and attentively wait, then hope for a better future can be restored, a future of peace. A future that can allow me to perceive, receive and share light, even where there is the darkness

Questions

I wonder if in any way you are being called to return to curiosity?

I wonder too what your onward journey could look like?

Mags Bryan

Curiosity

Three Wise Kings, Atlas Catalàn, 1375, Fol. V.

From observation to movement

How ruthlessly T S Eliot debunks the sanitised, sparkly, Hallmark Christmas card version of the journey of the magi - the three kings or wise men as they are sometimes known in the various translations of the Gospels. His poem ‘The journey of the magi’ (it’s a beautiful poem and worth reading, extract included) paints a vivid picture of the perils and privations of the journey they undertook in following the star to they knew not what or where.

What motivated them? The shepherds in the nativity stories had a clearer and much more spectacular intervention directing them towards a hazardous birth in squalid circumstances. The prompt for the magi was much more ambiguous: they saw something in the night sky, something bright they hadn’t noticed before which gave the appearance of moving. I imagine them watching this new phenomenon over a number of nights along with their astronomers and sages. What might have merely passed as a transient enigma in the heavens became, I imagine, an object of great curiosity, something which confounded their learned, educated minds.

Who knows the steps between their observations, enquiries and disputations and heading off into the unknown on their truculent camels. I’m inclined to believe that curiosity played a large part in their movement from observation to movement, from passivity to action. Incurious minds and hearts would have stayed in the comfort of home, with what was known and safe.

I imagine, like pilgrims the world over and through the ages, they knew there was a risk that they would never return from their quest. The opportunities for misadventure to overtake them must have been many. And yet they went.

safety and Fulfilment

Courage? Folly? Misguided adventurism? No, I find them beguiling figures because they allowed their curiosity about where (and to what) this star might lead to be their guide, notwithstanding the possible cost. And notwithstanding the people of their households thinking this was all madness. Mary Oliver’s poem ‘The journey’ names some of the forces that keep us where we are:

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice

- though the whole house began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

These three travellers of old, pilgrims on an uncertain path, ask me to reflect on what it is I allow to keep me safe but perhaps unfulfilled, to stay with what I know rather than what is calling me. They invite me to look - with self-compassion but a clear eye - at what keeps me comfortable and in the safety of what is expected of me.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the leading Jewish theologians and philosophers of the 20th century wrote, "Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.”

Questions

In this advent season, what is calling you to a pilgrimage of the heart? What is inviting you to relinquish the grip you have on whatever has become a shrine for you? Are there stirrings of longing or feelings of dissatisfaction that are promptings of the Spirit ushering you into a new season? If so, please allow them, give them permission to be in your life, bring curiosity to them, let them grow and bear fruit. Who knows where they will lead.

Gus MacLeod

“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 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 hostile 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.”

The Journey of the Magi (extract), T S Eliot