no longer at ease here...
READINGS:
ISAIAH 60:1-6
...hearts lightened
to see a child being born
to see the future
being given to us in the moment of wonder...
(David Rosenberg)
PSALM 72
Be born, child,
into this brilliant, dangerous world
where love's piercing light
perfects darkness
where love's light
through all our deaths
shines us into birth.
(Madeleine L'Engle)
EPHESIANS 3:2-6
...when I am scattered again in city and fear...
...in the fury of our time...
help me make a place for you
wherever you need to be.
(Ranier Maria Rilke)
MATTHEW 2:1-12
I cannot go back to the night.
O Truth, O small and unexpected thing,
You have taken so much from me.
How can I bear wisdom's pain?
But I have been shown: and I have seen.
(L'Engle)
I have felt the swaying of the elephant's shoulders;
and now you want me to climb on a jackass? Try
to be serious.
(Mirabai)
those many appalled nations
"civilized" and "progressive"
will find their eyes glued
and their imaginations riveted
on him
the mouths of world leaders
will fall open
in amazed silence
before their own ignorance
of something so real their
lips turning to rubber
before their false educations
their ears burning
with the fact
of what they've never listened to.
(D. Rosenberg)
'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The was 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 gong 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.
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 wine-skins.
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 lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have 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.
(T.S. Eliot, Journey of the Magi)
