The Third Way: Companionship

Day Three in "The Journey of the Wise Men: Twelve Days and Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Spiritual Practice" No one can take this journey for you. The journey toward God is yours---start to finish. Setting out has energized you, and following this Star is the one thing you now know you must do. You are afraid of this journey into the unknown, but you fear more staying put, staying here, stuck in the rut that's been your life.

This journey toward God is yours, but that doesn't mean you have to walk it alone, nor should you. You'll need companionship, for this is neither a safe nor an easy journey.

You'll most likely want to choose your own companions. But frankly, those who will help you most aren't the ones you'd choose. So don't go looking for your companions. Instead, keep focused on the Star, the One you seek (Matthew 2.2). Walk in the light that's given you, and remain open to God's mischief along the way. The Holy Spirit will orchestrate surprise meetings with remarkable people traveling the same direction. You'll miss them if you focus on making your own friends. They might not fit in at a dinner party back home, but they are the ones who'll bring you the comfort, humor, wisdom, and safety you'll need on this long journey.

And when the night is darkest and the companions you need are nowhere in sight, here's the best mischief of all . . . the Light you seek at the end of your journey will walk beside you, though you cannot yet see it.

Today I will trust that the companions I need will come; I don't need to find them. I will wait and watch in faith. And when they're given to me, I will listen with my heart for the gifts they bring.

(for a printable version of this post, click on this link)

The Second Way: Leaving

Day Two in "The Journey of the Wise Men: Twelve Days and Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Life of Prayer" There comes a point in each of our lives when we wake up, take a long look at our selves, and wonder what's become of us. We look around ourselves and at the person we've become and realize the life we're living isn't the life we want for ourselves.

There are new questions that old answers don't satisfy.  Tattered relationships. An insane pace. You're medicating your pain with work or sex, or by abusing alcohol or drugs.  Life as it is isn't working for you, but you haven't a clue what to do about it.

You can avoid the crisis that stares at you from the mirror. You can pray for a miracle. You can keep medicating your pain, but that's likely to keep you in this cul-de-sac, terribly broken, or worse, dead. Or you can embrace your crisis as the path of God---as incongruous as that may seem to be.

The sacred text doesn't tell us why the Wise Men left the life they once knew (Matthew 2.1-12). We only know that the light they'd glimpsed in the sky gave them such hope that they left it all behind and set out on a long, arduous, and dangerous journey, not knowing if they'd ever return or what would become of them.

Imagine you're one of them.  You look into your mirror with new eyes---eyes filled with a new and holy light.  Like them, you turn from what is not working---from the frustration and pain, the crushed dreams, the boredom. You watch as you set out on the path your crisis opens up before you.  Someone behind you hollers that you're a fool, but you no longer believe them.  Something else tells you it's the path of wisdom, a path leading to God.

Today, on this second day of Christmas, I will grow still in prayer, taking a long look at myself---no matter how painful that look may be. I'll look long and deep until I see two things about myself: 1. that I am in crisis, and 2. that taking this path may well be the smartest thing I've ever done. Trusting that wisdom, I set out into the unknown.

(for a printable version of this post, click on this link)

The First Way: Awakening

Day One in "The Journey of the Wise Men: Twelve Days and Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Life of Prayer" Prayer is universal. At all times and in all places people have uttered some kind of prayer. Every human heart yearns to awaken to the Light that radiates from the Center, Source, and Substance of all things. We are restless vagabonds until we come home to this Light manifest in Jesus, who is, astonishingly, Son of God---God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.

The Magi "observed his star at its rising" (Matthew 2.2). They had only hints at what this sign in the skies meant. They had no idea where it would take them and what it would do in and through them. They only knew they had to find it . . . come hell or high water.

To pray, you needn't know anything more than that you've seen a great light. And the first step of prayer is to awaken your desire (even desperation!) to move in its direction.

Prayer begins this way, with humble awareness of your need.

Today, Christmas Day, all I must do is to look to the Light and awaken my desire or desperation to find it . . . come hell or high water.

(for a printable version of this post, click on this link)

Introducing "The Journey of the Wise Men"

Twelve Days and Twelve Ways to Deepen Your Life of Prayer The Twelve Days of Christmas are largely forgotten today. If they are remembered, they're remembered as a song about "Lord's a leaping," and "partridges in a pear tree." The Twelve Days, December 25-January 5, are the true Christmas, the Christmas not of preparation for a single holiday, but of opening our hearts increasingly to the Absolute, the Ultimate, the Eternal Light of God.

For those who've glimpsed the Light come into the world in Emmanuel, God-With-Us, the Twelve Days are a journey into prayer, a season set at the beginning of the year that helps deepen our experience with God in the midst of daily life.

At the beginning of the Twelve Days stands the birth of Christ---that great eruption of light into the world, a slowly expanding fire kindled at the crossroads between East and West, North and South. The end of these Twelve Days hosts the celebration of Epiphany, a word that means "manifestation" in Greek. Epiphany centers on the story of the wise men, or Magi, who journeyed from the east to welcome the Christ. They stand for those who come to the Light, those awakened by the Light---enlightened in the true sense of the word.  They stand for those who return to their daily lives changed, bearers of the Light where ever they may be.

Today, Christmas Eve, I begin my journey into prayer.  I turn from all the preparations for Christmas, and instead of closing the door on Christmas as so many will in the next two days, I open my heart to the Absolute, the Ultimate, the Eternal Light of God, willing to go wherever the Light should lead me.

(for a printable version of this post, click on this link)