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Arise, shine; for your light has
come,
and the glory of the Lord has
risen upon you.
For darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you,
and his glory will appear over you.
Nations shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your
dawn.
Isaiah 60:1-3
Epiphany might just be my favorite church season. It’s certainly my favorite underrated church season. It’s when we take the hope, peace, joy, and love we know in Christ and carry it into our ordinary every day life. Too often we can forget this work and tuck it away with the Christmas tree. But when we attend to this work, we notice the light of Christ stays with us, for our light has come even as winter carries on (and snow maybe continues to fall?!) With this in mind here are two poems that speak to this work. May you find a reminder of the light of Christ within Madeline & Ann’s words and encouragement for the work of Christmas in the year ahead.
Epiphany by Madeline L’Engle
Unclench your fists.
Hold out your hands.
Take mine.
Let us hold each other.
Thus is his Glory
Manifest.
Boxed by Ann Weems
I must admit to a certain guilt
about stuffing the Holy Family into a box
in the aftermath of Christmas.
It’s frankly a time of personal triumph when,
each Advent’s Eve, I free them (and the others)
from a year’s imprisonment
boxed in the dark of our basement.
Out they come, one by one,
struggling through the straw,
last year’s tinsel still clinging to their robes.
Nevertheless, they appear,
ready to take their place again
in the light of another Christmas.
The Child is first
because he’s the one I’m most reluctant to box.
Attached forever to his cradle, he emerges,
apparently unscathed from the time spent upside down
to avoid the crush of the lid.
His mother, dressed eternally in blue,
still gazes adoringly,
in spite of the fact that
her features are somewhat smudged.
Joseph has stood for eleven months,
holding valiantly what’s left of his staff,
broken twenty Christmases ago
by a child who hugged a little too tightly.
The Wise Ones still travel,
though not quite so elegantly,
the standing camel having lost its back leg
and sitting camel having lost one ear.
However, gifts intact, they are ready to move.
The shepherds, walking or kneeling,
sometimes confused with Joseph
(who wears the same dull brown),
tumble forth, followed by three sheep
in very bad repair.
There they are again,
not a grand set surely,
but one the children (and now the grandchildren)
can touch and move about and reenact that silent night.
When the others return,
we will wind the music box on the back of the stable
and light the Advent candles
and go once more to Bethlehem.
And this year, when it’s time to pack the figure away,
we’ll be more careful that the Peace and Goodwill
aren’t also boxed for another year!
-The Rev. Isabella Fagiani, Associate Pastor
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