Epiphany? Yes, please!

Today I am pondering.
I am thinking about another year gone by.
I am imagining how I'd like to live in the year to come.
I am trying to remember all I've learned about shaping SMART goals and time management.
I am planning for New Year's Eve in light of Epiphany.

In what was perhaps not the brightest move - it certainly wasn't the most liturgically pure - I planned for the congregation I serve to mark Epiphany this coming Sunday (January 3rd) instead of the Second Sunday of Christmas.  This means (gasp) I haven't taken my own advice and have given short shrift to the 12 days of Christmas.  Then again, it also means that we will mark Epiphany whereas we wouldn't otherwise.

But here's what's really cool about my geeky liturgical guilt:  

God has worked through it to provide an epiphany just for me.

In common parlance an epiphany is a, "revelation, or insight".  When Christians talk about Epiphany they usually say, "ummm" and look at their shoes.  But the wisdom of our faith tradition lifts up Epiphany as a specific example of a "divine manifestation"; namely, the incarnation of the Word of God in the fleshly birth of Jesus Christ.  Our oldest and best stories tell us that this history altering occurrence came along with all the requisite signs and wonders, including a bright, shining star and the veneration of an itinerant band of wisdom seeking heathens.

Anyway, here I sit, pondering the past, planning for the future, and mostly feeling ill-equipped for the task when a small still voice inside me chimes in, "maybe you should start with the present."

I take up the book I have been reading devotionally,
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings and Meditations by Matthew Fox
and here is what I read:

"I ponder much and reflect in my human sense how wonderful my soul is! - Mechtild of Magdeburg"

"How often do you ponder the wondrous nature of your soul?  How it gives life and meaning to your senses?  Do you stop once a month, once a week, once an hour to appreciate your inner self - the joy and beauty, the wonder and delight, the thoughts and dreams that go on inside of you?  Can you remember the last time you did this?  If not, take a break from whatever distracts you - television, work, compulsive habits - and do so.  It is time well spent."

With a New Year upon the horizon, I am tempted to fantasize about being someone I am not.  I sit and daydream about being more fit, more important, more punctual, more capable.  It is a fixation on more that constitutes a consumptive perfectionism that is violent in no small way to my soul.  And, I think I am not alone in this.  There is a large cultural movement that urges us to think about New Years Eve as a giant reset button for our lives.  It is appealing because it holds out the (mostly false) hope that anything is possible, but it comes at the expense of pushing "delete" on so much that makes us ... well ... us.

Which brings me to my epiphany about New Year's in light of Epiphany (about time, I know):

An ever descending spiral of self obsession - what I like to call the tyranny of the self - is no road to a brighter future, even if it masquerades as a plan to be more and better.  The real gift of the magi to us is neither gold, nor frankincense, nor myrrh.  Their real gift is an example we can follow.

First, they engage in the active pursuit of wisdom.  In their particular case, they are students of astronomy, although I would argue any wisdom discipline will do because the key is not the particular knowledge gained but the experience of being opened up to that which is outside of the self.  

Second, once these "wisemen" receive the gift of an epiphany from outside of themselves, they have the good sense to drop their routines and to pursue it for a time.  Having glimpsed a divine manifestation - or "Holy Moment" - they seek to draw more fully into it, not simply to understand it but to more fully experience it in every way.

Finally, arriving at the source of their epiphany, these guru's take time to give of themselves through praise and the giving of thanks - sharing some of their material resources as the last and least part of the process, I might add.

Simply put, today God has shown me that Epiphany really is about an invitation into a more life-thriving pattern of responding to the Good News and Great Joy of Christmas - the choice of the Divine Light to dwell with and even within the least and lowly.  My job isn't to make myself more of anything.  Our job is to celebrate regularly, with awe and thanksgiving, the Light that has already broken upon us.

For now, I am going to focus on a more regular pattern of celebration, praise, and thanksgiving of God: among, within and above.  For now, I'll leave off on Fox's invitation to "take a break from the things that distract" from the essential work.  It seems to me that Lent will provide a good opportunity for some of that work.

Epiphany is Always,

Phil