One King’s Epiphany

Happy Christ­mas Every­one! This is from Madeleine L’Engle. Some­thing I first read years ago that gave me a lot to think about. I sug­gest that this be your own reflec­tion piece for this Christ­mas night.

What would a scep­tic Magi/Wiseman feel when he sees the babe in the manger for the first time? All indi­ca­tions point to Him as the great­est King of all. But here he is, wrapped in swad­dling clothes, among the stinky dung of ani­mals. Here, before you, is the real Star.

Now, what are you to do? If you were one of the magi, would you also miss the stars?

One King’s Epiphany
Madeleine L’Engle

I shall miss the stars
Not that I shall stop look­ing
as they pat­tern their wild wills each night
across an inchoate sky, but I must see them with a dif­fer­ent awe.

If I trace their flames’ ascend­ing and descend­ing –
rela­tion­ships and cor­re­spon­dences –
then I deny what they have just revealed.
The sum of their oppo­si­tions, jux­ta­po­si­tions,
led me to the end of all sums:
a long jour­ney, cold, dark and uncer­tain,
toward the ulti­mate equation.

How can I under­stand? If I turn back from this,
com­pelled to seek all answers in the stars,
then this – Who – they have led me to
is not the One they said: they will have lied.
No stars are liars!
If they had lied about this
I could never trust their power again.

But I believe they showed the truth,
truth breath­ing,
truth whom I have touched with my own hands,
wor­shipped with my gifts.
If I have bowed, made
obei­sance to this final arith­metic,
I can­not ask the future from the stars with­out betray­ing
the One whom they have led me to.
It will be hard not to ask, just once again,
to see by math­e­mat­i­cal fore­cast where he will grow,
where go, what king­dom con­quer, what crown wear.

But would it not be going beyond truth
[the obscene reduc­tio ad absur­dum]
to lose my faith in truth once, and once for all
revealed in full dayspring of the sun?
I can­not go back tonight.

O Truth, O small and unex­pected thing,
You have taken so much from me.
How can I bear wisdom’s pain?
But I have been shown: and I have seen.

Yes. I shall miss the stars.