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January 6, 2002
Epiphany
Today marks the arrival of the Magi, and the end of the Christmas season, even as the first snow of Winter is in the offing. The arrival of Wisdom is much to be wished for, and surely it must travel a long hard road to reach the likes of us. Shall we receive it as a gift, putting us in the position of the Child, rewarded for nothing save innate goodness? Even so, we will not learn how to be wise, except by living out the travails of this Life. And that too puts us in His place. Or Him in ours, more to the point of today’s Holiday.The Magi recognized Christ, though they were not Christian. Some say the terms of existence changed that day, in a New Dispensation. The Gnostic in me says that the only change was in our understanding of the terms, and that revelation and recognition are much the same, though we take one as a gift, and the other as an exercise of our own faculties. So it is that the Divine becomes Human: simply through the recognition that Humanity is an aspect of Divinity; even its coarsest Manifestation.
Or perhaps its finest.
The Magi did not so much gain a revelation as extract an admission; the truth of one of those festering secrets that separate us from God.
* * * * * * *
One new bit of Wisdom can make everything clearer, and another Year serves to make us all wiser, or so it may be hoped. One Winter revelation came to me as I walked in McGowan’s Pass, by the shore of the Meer. The bare twigs revealed a Baltimore Oriole nest overhanging the path along the water’s edge. There are many nests built in the Park each year, but the Oriole’s is distinctive: a dangling sack, rather than the usual cup-like arrangement.I knew it had to be there.
I saw the birds in the Spring; even watched them mating nearby. As Spring passed into Summer I saw them feeding their young in the Mulberry tree at Nutter’s Battery.
But I never saw the nest.
Not until now, with the wisdom of Winter, whose nakedness reveals much that was hidden.
Now on display, underneath a wandering Star.