Let us hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church.

May it be so.

The Message

Richard Rorh is a Franciscan priest in New Mexico, who in 1986 founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque. The author of more than twenty books, and internationally known speaker, he is also a regular contributing writer for both Sojourners and Ttikkun magazines, as well as the Center's quarterly journal, Radical Grace.

I picked up his book, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, at a Presbytery meeting this past October, and made my way through it during advent. I'll be referring to some of his wisdom this morning.

According to the storyteller we call Matthew, they were magi – scholars – sometimes called astrologers – who made the trek. We're not told how many, what gender, the ages, or any other information. Somewhere along the line, according to "tradition" they somehow became "three wise men". Yet that's not what we're told. And for years I've thought the seekers could have been a whole caravan of people – women, men, children, and youth – of all ages, and from every life-situation imaginable.

Whoever they were, they had been searching – seeking – for something new, and different, and life changing, perhaps. We have no idea how long their quest had been – one, two years? Maybe for as long as they could remember? We're not told. But they had seen a sign – a "star in its rising" the writer tells us. Notice – they had seen it – not followed it. That's not what we've always been told either, is it?

Whatever this "star" was they noticed, they understood signs, and the sign appeared to them where they were. They were 'in tune' with the religion and culture of their day, and when they saw this phenomenon that seemingly came out of nowhere – from a place and in a time least imagined or expected – they knew within their heart of hearts that something new was coming into their reality.

Have you been on a search of some sort or another? Is there something that's been eating away at you, pulling you in a new direction, perhaps caught your attention that you cannot seem to figure out just what it is? Maybe you've seen, or sensed, a sign of some sort. Something that's come from out of nowhere, that never in your wildest imagination you could have fathomed? What do you do with this? Does it, too, take you on a search from where you are, to a new level, to another "place" in life?

Carl Jung once observed that

Thoroughly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life. Worse still, we take this step with the false presupposition that our truths and our ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life's morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening and what in the morning was true, at evening will have become a lie.¹

Writes Rorh,

A journey into the second half of our own lives awaits us all[, but] not everybody goes there… Many people do not even know there is one. There are too few who are aware of it, tell us about it, or know that it is different from the journey of the first half of life. … [M]any, if not most, people and institutions remain stymied in the preoccupations of the first half of life…most peoples' concerns remain those of establishing their personal (or superior) identity, creating various boundary markers for themselves, seeking security, and perhaps lining to what seem like significant people or projects.²

The wise ones, based only on what they sensed, toddled off to Jerusalem in search of what they were seeking. And I suppose this would make sense, since the sign lured them toward a new awareness, a new reality. To them, it was as if a new experience of the Holy indicated a new "ruler" – a new significance in their lives, perhaps – had been born. And what better place to go than the royal household, where this new person, one would presume, would be found. But when they arrived, they quickly realized they were in the wrong place. The king, Herod, had no idea what they were talking about. He wasn't real happy about this new ruler, this new expression of the Holy. In fact, Herod was unnerved by the situation. We're told that "he was frightened".

And why wouldn't he be terrified? He was threatened. Their national security had been breached, so-to-speak, and some foreigner had infiltrated the system. Of course, the news spread like wildfire, and the entire city was put on the highest level of alert. Maybe not to the extent that our neighbours to the south experienced after 9-11. Yet red seemed to be the colour-of-the-day insofar as the department of defence would be called upon to look into.

So he summoned his high-profile officials to help him figure this all out and come up with a game plan as to how to deal with the situation, this perceived threat. He called his own "wise ones" for advice – those whom he knew would hopefully have some knowledge, some answers, of what this might all mean.

When you have sensed that something new is on the horizon that has the possibility and potential to shake up, and transform your reality, do you feel threatened? Does it frighten you? Are you terrified? Do you also call together those whose counsel and advice you trust, those people in your life who may be able to shed some light on the situation, and help you figure it all out? Do we really think that God – the Holy – that to which we are called and invited to experience and be a part in, and of, can be found by proxy, by inheritance through someone other than ourselves?

We are all trying to find…a "lever and a place to stand" so that we can move the world just a little bit. … [T]his first-half-of-life task is no more than finding the starting gate…merely the warm-up act, not the journey…the raft but not the shore. … We know about this further journey from the clear and inviting voices of others who have been there, from the sacred and secular texts that invite us there, from our own observations of people who have entered this new territory, and also, sadly, from those who never seem to move on. The further journey usually appears like a seductive invitation and a kind of promise or hope. We are summoned to it, not commanded to go, perhaps because each of us has to go on this path freely, with all the messy and raw material of our own unique lives.³

Well, Herod didn't like what he heard. In fact, he seems to have been more upset and bothered than before he met with those he thought had all the answers. So he called another meeting – this time a secret conference. But it wasn't with his "wise ones" this time. He wanted to get to the Magi before anyone else did, and finagle them into helping him take care of the "problem" once and for all. So, on the pretense of wanting to "worship" and "honour" this newborn king, this out-of-the-ordinary, Herod talked the group into doing his dirty work for him. And off they went in search of not only that which had been beckoning and calling to them, but also to find the perceived threat that the worldly powers wanted to eradicate.

Do you do this – find someone else to 'get the facts' for you? Do you rely on someone else – be it the minister, Sunday School teacher, Board chair, or someone else you perceive as more knowledgeable, taking her, or his, word for it? It's a lot less stressful, and a lot less work, if you can do this, believe me. Why bother seeking out the truth for ourself when there's someone else who'll tell me? But does it help us? Do we really get, or find, the answers, the insight, the experience we're seeking when we do this? Or is there, perhaps, something to be said for finding out and discovering for one's self?

There are guideposts, some common patterns, utterly new kinds of goals, a few warnings, and even personal guides on this further journey. All of these sources and resources give…the courage and the desire to try to map the terrain of this further journey, along with the terrain of the first journey, but most especially the needed crossover points. … this map…is the kind of soul truth that we know "through a glass darkly"…and through a glass brightly at the same time. Yet any glass through which we see is always made of human hands… The Light comes from elsewhere, yet it is necessarily reflected through those of us still walking on the journey ourselves. As Desmond Tutu [once said]…"We are only the light bulbs…and our job is just to remain screwed in!"⁴

Once the Magi 'arrived' at the place where they thought they were being called and led to, they did not find what they expected. Instead of a "king" in a palace, with all that goes along with the status and position, they found a house. A humble, mud-walled, one-room dwelling, perhaps with a thatched roof. And it was in Bethlehem of all places. Certainly not the kind of place one would expect to find a king, that's for sure. How odd it must have all seemed.

Have you ever had this happen – that, once you realized you were being pulled and called to, what you were searching for – or thought you were seeking – turned out to be something totally unlike you expected? What did you do? What do you do?

Even though the Wise ones were not expecting to find the situation they believed they were being called to experience, once they found that to which they had been led, they recognized what they had been seeking was within them. This is not always an easy place to rest in. Instead of some ritzy, hoity-toity, world-class, popular setting where we would presume to find that which is Wholly Other, that which is Mystery beyond all Mystery, more-often-than-not, if you haven't discovered by now, is where the Holy is not only found, but most profoundly experienced and encountered. And when we are fortunate enough to discover, as the Celts call, a "thin place", where heaven meets earth – where the divine and the temporal converge and meet – how do we respond, or react? Do we, also, "kneel down" and pay homage – worship and become one with Other?

We're told they offered gifts to that One for whom they searched and sought and found – "gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh". Gold for royalty, frankincense for the divine, and myrrh to indicate this One's death and burial – at least, according to "tradition" this is what these gifts "supposedly" represent. But remember, the stories were penned with metaphorical and highly symbolic overtones.

Once you find, or discover, the Holy within your search – do you also present your "gifts" of sorts? Instead of what we have always considered, or been taught, these gifts represent, what if, instead the gold is our financial support, and our gifts of time and talents? What if the frankincense is our leadership, our spiritual growth, maturity, and formation through study, fellowship, and prayer? What if the myrrh could be our preparation for Jesus' death, as in the risky ministries of social issues, and standing up to the powers of this world in doing justice, loving mercy and kindness, and walking humbly with our God, as we are called to do through the prophet Micah?

"Having been warned in a dream not to go back the way they'd come, the Wise ones left for their own country by another road". Even though these pilgrim travellers had not found exactly what they thought they were in search of, when they did discover the One for whom they had been seeking, they were changed. They were no longer the same ones whom Herod had convinced to spy for him. And as a result of their changed hearts, changed lives, changed outlook, they returned to where they had come from, "by another road". Perhaps it was, as poet Robert Frost mused:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveller,
long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth;
then took the other, as just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim,
because it was grassy and wanted wear;
though as for that the passing there had worn them really about the same,
and both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference⁵

` "The Road Not Taken ~

Rohr writes,

I believe that God gives us our soul, our deepest identity, our True Self, our unique blueprint, at our "immaculate conception". Our unique little bit of heaven is installed by the Manufacturer within the product, at the beginning! We are given a span of years to discover…choose…and to live our own destiny to the full. If we do not, our True Self will never be offered again, in our unique form… Our soul's discovery is utterly crucial, momentous, and of pressing importance for each of us and for the world. We do not "make" or "create" our souls; we just "grow" them up. We are the clumsy stewards of our own souls…charged to awaken, and much of the work of spirituality is learning how to stay out of the way of this rather natural growing and awakening. We need to unlearn a lot, it seems, to get back to that foundational life which is "hidden in God"… yes, transformation is often more about unlearning than learning, which is why the religious traditions call it "conversion" or "repentance".⁶

We've been gifted with a new year, a new slate, a new untravelled map before us. This season of Epiphany, of light, awareness, invitation, and even dare – is graciously gifted to us that we might experience Other as perhaps never before.

Are you seeking, searching, for something more, at this place and time in your life? Is there, perhaps, a sign of some sort that has been beckoning you to new, to transformation, to Other? If you've noticed, or sensed this, or even if you haven't had a conscious awareness of "something" pulling you forward, leading you on, what do you expect, or hope, to find? What if it's not what you, or anyone else, think it may be? What will you do? Be afraid? Find someone else to "do it" for you, and rest on their version, their experience, their realization? Or will you take the challenge and the invitation to find out for yourself?

What if it changes you? Will you go back to the same as you were before? Or will you, like the Magi, allow that experience of the Holy lead you home – wherever and whatever "home" might be for you – by "another road"?

"Get out of bed…! Wake up. Put your face in the sunlight. God's bright glory has risen for you. God rises on you, Divine's sunrise wonder breaks over you"!

And may it be so.