January 6: The Magi
The Magi had a dream not to return to King Herod to tell him where the child was, but instead to take a different route home.
On this day of Epiphany, which is also celebrated by some cultures (not my own) as Women's Christmas, I am thinking about the idea of going home by a different road.
When my spouse and I opened our home to people in need and named it Petalouda House, we hoped to help people find healing and hope, to give them a home for a short or long period of time. We also hoped to help them transition to the home they would choose next--the one that would perhaps be more permanent.
It has not always worked that way. Some residents have been removed suddenly against our will and theirs. Some have chosen to leave when we knew they were ready. Some we had to ask to leave before we knew they were ready, because they weren't safe or able to live here. Some have had to go to more restrictive settings, rather than less. Every one of them went "home" by a road different than the one expected.
When I look back at my own life, I am in awe at how nothing and everything makes sense. I can pinpoint critical moments--finding the deep spiritual place I could get to when reading and writing poetry, beginning to make sense of my family history through writing poems, coming out, going to grad school to become a poet and discovering how much I loved community-based work, developing a place for myself at the university where I work now, a place I'd planned to stay a maximum of two years 17 years ago. I can see how that community work has evolved, and how so much of it relates back to my own life story (immigrant rights, violence prevention, listening to the stories of elders, for instance). I can see how my own life, my family's story, and the people I got to meet through community work led me to adopt my daughter and eventually led me to a partner who shares my passion for helping others heal. I can see how everything fits together, how each thread is a part of a messy-in-the-back, beautiful-in-the-front tapestry.
But of course in the midst of the daily struggles and difficult decisions, there was no tapestry, just a thread dangling, threatening to unravel the pattern. I am in a place like that now, making difficult decisions about the level of care my daughter really needs as she experiences a mental health crisis. I can't see the tapestry now, but I am old enough to know that this is another thread I am weaving in, that I am going to learn something new about wholeness and beauty even from this difficult, dangling place.
Back to the Magi--it must not have been convenient (at best) and scary (at worst) to defy Herod and go home another way. But on their way back, the Magi were carrying with them the memory of that baby born in a strange place. They were changed by the encounter, and they understood the story in a new way--which is to say, they stopped trying to understand it and instead opened themselves to the awe of what was happening, to stars and strange dreams and new directions.
Our Greek Christmas hymn includes the line, "Those who worshipped the stars learned to worship you through the stars," and in a way, that's how it works for all of us--we find our signs in our ordinary lives, and those signs lead us to where we're supposed to go next, if we're paying attention. But we won't see the tapestry all at once, so we have to move thread by thread, trusting in the path.
On this day of Epiphany, which is also celebrated by some cultures (not my own) as Women's Christmas, I am thinking about the idea of going home by a different road.
When my spouse and I opened our home to people in need and named it Petalouda House, we hoped to help people find healing and hope, to give them a home for a short or long period of time. We also hoped to help them transition to the home they would choose next--the one that would perhaps be more permanent.
It has not always worked that way. Some residents have been removed suddenly against our will and theirs. Some have chosen to leave when we knew they were ready. Some we had to ask to leave before we knew they were ready, because they weren't safe or able to live here. Some have had to go to more restrictive settings, rather than less. Every one of them went "home" by a road different than the one expected.
When I look back at my own life, I am in awe at how nothing and everything makes sense. I can pinpoint critical moments--finding the deep spiritual place I could get to when reading and writing poetry, beginning to make sense of my family history through writing poems, coming out, going to grad school to become a poet and discovering how much I loved community-based work, developing a place for myself at the university where I work now, a place I'd planned to stay a maximum of two years 17 years ago. I can see how that community work has evolved, and how so much of it relates back to my own life story (immigrant rights, violence prevention, listening to the stories of elders, for instance). I can see how my own life, my family's story, and the people I got to meet through community work led me to adopt my daughter and eventually led me to a partner who shares my passion for helping others heal. I can see how everything fits together, how each thread is a part of a messy-in-the-back, beautiful-in-the-front tapestry.
But of course in the midst of the daily struggles and difficult decisions, there was no tapestry, just a thread dangling, threatening to unravel the pattern. I am in a place like that now, making difficult decisions about the level of care my daughter really needs as she experiences a mental health crisis. I can't see the tapestry now, but I am old enough to know that this is another thread I am weaving in, that I am going to learn something new about wholeness and beauty even from this difficult, dangling place.
Back to the Magi--it must not have been convenient (at best) and scary (at worst) to defy Herod and go home another way. But on their way back, the Magi were carrying with them the memory of that baby born in a strange place. They were changed by the encounter, and they understood the story in a new way--which is to say, they stopped trying to understand it and instead opened themselves to the awe of what was happening, to stars and strange dreams and new directions.
Our Greek Christmas hymn includes the line, "Those who worshipped the stars learned to worship you through the stars," and in a way, that's how it works for all of us--we find our signs in our ordinary lives, and those signs lead us to where we're supposed to go next, if we're paying attention. But we won't see the tapestry all at once, so we have to move thread by thread, trusting in the path.
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