The Road to Bethlehem

Tonight is a writing night. There's a lot on my soul that I have to get out before the morning. This is the time of the Hag, time to seek blessing from the Great Crone. I've been ordering presents for Three King's Day, and its going to be a good one, really the first one. When my mother was around I didn't have the energy to celebrate this day. It couldn't live up to Christmas and quite frankly, I was too broke to. Now, in this new world where we are making our own Christmases, having our own holidays, all a little bereft, needing to stoke the fires, I am ready to finally celebrate Epiphany, a holiday I have largely ignored.

Why do we get presents? What is the significance. Am I remembering what the wise men did for Jesus? Or am I just engaging in pleasures? I think I'm becoming a child again, and I think at Christmas we finally seek the wisdom and power of the Child. We sheltered him, looked at him, adored him, but now we beseech him. It seems wrong, undignified, un grown up. Now we ask the Child to help us and turn to the Child in us. We delight ourselves with gifts and songs as I will surely do.

But the truth is, I don't know what's going to come in Epiphany. I've never celebrated it. Before I grimly came into winter, now, having passed through much grimness, having endured death, I come into it with something that is more than hope.This Ephiphany I will learn what it means to come to the King and to follow his way. I will learn a little.

Tomorrow, we will take the magi out and cense them for the first time, set them on their journey. We will pass from that first phase of Christmas as we passed out of Advent, and move to the present, accepting whatever grace we are given.