As a child in the Pacific Northwest, I fell in love with the night sky. Days were often overcast or rainy, but at night, the clouds would part and I could see the canopy of constellations, there to guide ships at sea. My dad would even wake us up to see an eclipse of the moon or a meteor shower.
The wise men, who traveled by night to avoid the searing desert heat, must have loved the night sky too. In Matthew’s account of their Epiphany journey, they followed a rising star set against the constellations, to find a newborn king.* Willing to trust its truth, they knelt by a smelly manger to honor this unknown child and, being warned in a dream not to report back to Herod, they returned by another route, moving silently out of the biblical story as mysteriously as they had come. That is, until I began to travel in Central America and saw how much the three kings are celebrated in Latin cultures. There, the three kings are honored as the core of the Christmas story. Children receive gifts because the kings came bringing gifts, as though each birth might be another Christ-child.
Who were these ancient astrologers? What made them wise? Are they simply in the story to say that Jesus would become a messiah for Gentiles as well as Jews? Could they be guides for our own journey?
Learning to trust darkness and dreams has given more depth and meaning to my faith journey. Darkness harbors new birth. Endings allow for renewal without overcrowding. Loss is the other side of love. For the upcoming week of reflections, I have chosen passages from Barbara Brown Taylor’s book, Learning to Walk in the Dark. Rather than the “full solar spirituality” that Taylor describes as the sunny side of faith, certainty of belief, positive answers, and incessant focus on light, I breathe a sigh of relief when the psalmist proclaims “darkness and light are as one to You.” Even death and despair have their place in our journey toward wholeness.
In this season of Epiphany, may we look for the gifts of darkness, of desert loneliness and wilderness times. May we notice what has been hidden in the shadows. May we follow a trembling star to a new place, where the mysteries of life are unfolding in darkness. May we trust the journey ahead.
–Marjory Zoet Bankson, Editor of InwardOutward.org
