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Epiphany Sunday
Yesterday having been the Feast of the Epiphany, I share this wonderful Epiphany poem by writer and poet Dudley Delffs, my next door neighbor. I love the passage,
Like wise men from afar,
exotic visitors to our own lives,
we scan the horizon each morning
with ferocious hope, wondering
if this is the day when our star
appears…
The star, the poem explains, is our heart’s desire. When we find it, we “make camp and worship, adore the living/ daylight out of every new morning.” The Epiphany is that moment when the numinous enters our lives and we feel we are seeing the world as though for the first time. As T.S. Eliot observes in his own Epiphany poem, even when the journey is long and difficult, no other search compares with it.
Epiphany
By Dudley Delffs
Black coffee morning in winter,
and the Three Kings have finally found
the Christ Child, many days, fittingly,
after all the hoopla has been exchanged
for gifts of another kind.
Outside my window, the sun
lets down her hair, spills light
across the shoulders of the frozen earth,
loosens the white shawl tatted
by snow and ice on muddy ground.
Like wise men from afar,
exotic visitors to our own lives,
we scan the horizon each morning
with ferocious hope, wondering
if this is the day when our star
appears, the shine in the eyes
of someone who knows
where we’re going, a gold beacon
winking from the dark sea of desire.
We can’t help but wander with them,
the Magi, traipsing like gypsies,
across moor and mountain,
field and fountain, seeking, knocking,
following, finding. What do you do
when you find your heart’s desire?
You make camp and worship, adore the living
daylight out of every new morning.
You offer all you came to give.