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Of course they never consulted us. They were wise men, kings, star-readers, and we merely transportation. They simply loaded us with gifts and turned us toward the star. I ask you, what would a king know of choosing presents for a child? Had they ever even seen a baby born to such simple folks, so naked of pretension, so open to the wind? What would such a child care for perfumes and gold? Far better to have asked one born in the desert, tested by wind and sand. We saw what he would need: the gift of perseverance, of continuing on the hard way, making do with what there is, living on what you have inside. The gift of holding up under a burden, of lifting another with grace, of kneeling
To accept the weight of what you must bear. Our footsteps could have rocked him with the rhythm of the road, shown him comfort in a harsh land, the dignity of continually moving forward. But the wise men were not wise enough to ask. They simply left their trinkets and admired the rustic view. Before you knew it we were turned again toward home, carrying men only half-willing to be amazed. But never mind. We saw the baby, felt him reach for the bright tassels of our gear. We desert amblers have our ways of seeing what you chatterers must miss. That child at heart knows something about following a star. Our gifts are given. Have no doubt. His life will bear the print of who we are.
By the Rev. Dr. Lynn Ungar, San Leandro, California
Quest December 2003 Contents The Camels Speak Stargazers, Pilgrims and Epiphanies Epiphanies Member Profile: Joan Steffens Sign up for CLF-Announce Prison Pen Pals Needed We are delighted to announce REsources for Living A Season Called Advent Did You Know
by Patrick O'Neill, senior minister, First Unitarian Society of Wilmington, Delaware
According to the ecclesiastical calendar, the Christmas season officially ends in early January with the feast of the Epiphany. The Gospel accounts in Luke and Matthew are a bit vague on chronology, but tradition has it that the Three Wise Men from the East were a bit tardy arriving in Bethlehem. It seems that camel-travel in those days was no more reliable than Amtrak in our own. The ox and lamb and the shepherds had all come and gone a full two weeks before Caspar, Balthazar, and Melchior finally made it to the humble stable.
It is a grand story these three pilgrims present to the imagination. We may not put much store in heavenly portents, but apparently these three Zoroastrian travelers would go to considerable lengths to follow their star. Traveling by night, they reach across the centuries, laden with strange gifts for an unknown child. The gold we certainly understand. The frankincense and myrrh require some footnotes.
The Gospels never tell us what became of the Magi. We don't know if this particular trip was a one-shot deal for them, or whether they were in the habit of doing this sort of thing. We don't know how many comets these astrologers followed over the years, how many birthplaces they visited, or exactly how many infants they honored in this fashion. It makes for interesting speculation.
The birth of prophets requires some imagination, some pageantry, some poetry. The world without its stargazers, without its pilgrims, without heavenly portents is a stark and barren place.
The occasional comet still streaks across winter skies, to be sure, but our capacity to be awestruck seems diminished. And babes, more and more of them, continue to be born in rude huts—and we pray that at least some of them will be prophets. But if kings no longer attend their births, if gold and frankincense and myrrh seem small recompense in a cold and violent world, if we no longer recognize the power of epiphanies to ignite our imaginations—then perhaps nothing we do can make much difference. For if that is the case, then perhaps the human race has finally reached the point where we are truly beyond salvation.
So here's to epiphanies, great and small, whenever they occur. A blessing on all Wise Men and Women, East and West. Here's to the stargazers and pilgrims everywhere, who are still foolish enough and brave enough to follow their stars, who travel by night, who bestow their uncommon gifts on us all.
When the subject of Epiphany came up on one of our electronic lists, CLF-L, we asked if we might print a few of them. Thanks go to the authors, and to all the members of the CLF's on-line community who help to keep us connected. (Information about CLF-L is at www.uua.org/clf/lists.html.)
From Susannah West, CLF member, Ripley, Ohio
Though Christmas is very low key in our house, we do have a tradition of the Camel, who has come to replace Santa for us. Since the Camel has far fewer households to visit, he is able to respond personally to notes left for him before Christmas, and expresses his desire for peanut butter and pistachios to be left out for him on Christmas Eve. The Camel grew out of an investigation into various countries' Christmas traditions when I was in grade school, after we'd seen a production of "Amahl and the Night Visitors."
From Ann Woldt, Wautoma, Wisconsin
In Wisconsin there are several Amish communities. We have become friends with one large group of them, many of whom are part of an extended family. Like most groups of people, there are differences in the way in which things are done within the group, so what I'm relating about this celebration may only be specific to this group.
Our friends have celebrations on many of the same holidays that we "English" do. (In Amish communities, if you're not Amish, you're "English.") We've shared Thanksgiving with them in their homes, with the traditional turkey-and-all-the-trimmings. And Christmas, while low-key—they don't exchange more than one or two presents for each person in the household; they don't have a Christmas tree; they don't otherwise decorate—is a time when families get together and enjoy a feast, and the children play with new sets of dominoes and other children's games. Often the adults join in, with much laughter and joking and fun.
But Epiphany seems to be a much more serious holiday. If they work out in the community (many of them do here, as opposed to working on their own farms or in their own shops), they take this day off from work. They go to church, which is held in one of their homes, pray, and fast until evening, when a meal is served. It is also the time that they make decisions as a community as to which families might need financial assistance. If, for instance, someone's barn burned this past year, someone has major medical bills or someone lost a prize cow or horse the community will help them out. The monies that have been collected all year are divided and distributed "to each, according to their need." If a family has not suffered any financial crisis that needs attention, they do not get funds that year, but the money is saved for future needs. Although our Amish friends don't talk specifically about the coming of the wise men, it seems to me that the practice of distribution of resources is at least indirectly related to that—a coming together, thanking God for their good fortune, and giving away what they have to those in need.
From Sue Burke, Madrid, Spain
Here in Spain, the holidays finally end tomorrow with Three Kings Day (Dia de los reyes magos). The Kings will arrive in Madrid tonight in a big parade, and after midnight, they will ride down every street to deliver presents to all the children—"bad" ones will get coal.
The Bible tells us that three wise men followed a star to the baby Jesus and gave him gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but the Bible doesn't tell us everything. We know, for example, that they were not merely wise men, they were kings, and they had names. They are represented in Madrid's parade by aldermen in costumes, and the Ministry of Culture tells us how the kings are split up among political parties: "Melchor, who brought gold, proof of royalty, belongs to the People's Party (the most conservative); Gaspar, who came to Bethlehem with frankincense, representing divinity, is under the authority of the Leftist Union; and Baltasar, who brought myrrh as a present in remembrance of human frailty, is the responsibility of the Socialists."
Alderwomen are allowed to be kings, but Baltasar is always a debate for the Socialists. It doesn't say so in the Bible, but we know he was black, and there are no black aldermen. Some Socialists want to recruit a black constituent, but this year as in the past, Baltasar will simply wear a lot of makeup.
About 700,000 people are expected along the parade route, and at the end, the mayor will give the Kings the keys to the city to help them get in all the houses. The King's pageboys and girls will distribute tons of candy to spectators. There will be 42 units, among them a float from the Sanitation Department ("A clean Madrid is capital") urging children to recycle their wrapping paper and gift boxes properly.
by Jane Rzepka, minister, Church of the Larger Fellowship
Epiphanies Great and Small
I have been a committed Unitarian Universalist all my life. Like many of you, I have always appreciated the freedom, the challenge, the spiritual depth, the warmth. But I'm not sure I've ever said right out loud that one major component of Unitarian Universalism that has always drawn and held me is that it's such a blast! This religion has a quirkiness to it that includes celebration and fun and surprises, and, well, "epiphanies" when we least expect them.
A parishioner from the church I used to serve said he first attended that church on a day when our worship service included African drumming. The next time he visited us the music was gospel. He was hooked. Hooked on this weird notion that religious celebration takes many forms, from the raucous to the rhythmic, and, he later learned, from the silent to the systematic.
I've been recalling the jazz service, and the Santa Lucia procession, and the Bartok service, and Easters, and the Peruvian flutes, and the Jewish High Holy Days and the Kwanzaa celebration and how we sometimes stretch ourselves into ways of the spirit that we never knew were out there. As Unitarian Universalists, every now and then we introduce ourselves to something that is new to us spiritually, and if we like it, we are free to continue that form of spiritual celebration in our own lives.
It's as though each Unitarian Universalist has the chance to pick a number from zero to 365, and that's how many religious holiday celebrations we each get! If you're the type who enjoys celebrating Arbor Day every year with family friends, or watching the Grinch every Christmas afternoon alone with your dog, or bird watching on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, or keeping a vigil on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, or drumming in the solstice, you have the enthusiastic support of our religion.
If, on the other hand, you feel that Good Friday and Easter are a bizarre and morbid sequence, or that candles are corny, or that drumming in the solstice is just one more noisy nuisance in a very busy year, you, too, have a sympathetic church behind you all the way.
We just have to decide for ourselves, day to day, year to year.
This time of year is heavily infused with Christian culture almost everywhere. Some Unitarian Universalists, of course, were raised in the Christian tradition and continue to practice a liberal Christian Unitarian Universalism, and some of us were raised in different or more varied religious environments.
But whatever your background, the Epiphany story is pretty good mythology. It's not Biblical for the most part; it's folk tradition and artistic convention. The story goes like this:
Long ago, in the East, there lived three Magi: Melchior, Caspar, and Balthazar. These men were members of a religious caste that worshiped the sun, moon, earth, fire, water, and winds. Each night, they looked at the sky and wrote down where the stars were, where they had come from, and where they were going.
One night, a star they had never seen before appeared in the sky. Each of the kings consulted his books and found that this new star was the sign that a great king was about to be born. They prepared for the trip, collected gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and set off, following the star.
On the sixth day of January, like a flame, that star pointed out the King of Kings. And going into the stable, they saw the child with his mother, Mary. Falling down on their knees they honored him. Then they opened their treasures and offered the gifts, as the star shone above.
We all know about stars. Sometimes when you come home at night and you're unloading the groceries you picked up on the way home, the stars catch your eye and you notice. Or you're on a boat, or in an airplane, or driving along, or walking the dog, and there they are, the stars, and you notice.
But some years back, when I was on sabbatical in the Sahara Desert, I "noticed" in a different way. In the Sahara, if you get out far enough, you have only two things: sand and sky. No clouds. No lights in the distance. No airplanes above. No sounds. No moisture, and therefore no plants, no insects, no animals. No hills, no roads, no buildings. Just sand and sky.
If, in the middle of the night, you wake up in your sleeping bag and open your eyes you will be enveloped in a complete darkness unlike any other, and piercing that darkness is a night sky of many, many, many more stars than you ever thought possible. You roll your head around as you lie there and there are stars past your cheekbone and beyond your hairline and down past your chin and your toes and over past your other cheekbone. Stars stretch to that place where the sky meets the land—bright stars, dim stars, shooting stars. In the desert, you don't just notice the stars out of the corner of your eye as you unload your groceries, the stars clobber you, they grab you by the scruff of the neck, they command your attention and you all but come to your knees with the wonder of it all. It comes as no surprise to me that in the Epiphany story, set in the desert, stars figure prominently.
In the story, stars are for following. It seems to me that the obvious sermon about the Epiphany star would suggest that we each identify a star that grabs our attention as that star would in the desert. The sermon would say, "Follow that star, that dream, that goal, even that New Year's resolution would do, I guess. Recommit to following that star."
That's a sermon I like OK. Clearly a number of us do lose sight of our own personal dreams in the dailiness of jobs, and family, and responsibilities, and obligations, and society in general. We need to be reminded to tend to ourselves, to dream dreams, to anticipate some star out there, something nice out there that's fun, or satisfying, or healing, or life-giving. When friends give up their homes, quit their jobs, buy a Winnebago and take off for an extended adventure, they are certainly following their star. We watch as people lay the groundwork, save the money, fulfill their obligations—both business and personal—plot the dates and follow their stars, and we know how it was for the Magi, and how it could be for us.
The question I've never heard talked about much, though, is that once you take off and follow that star, and you travel a long time, and you finally get there, what do you have?
According to the story, what you have is "an epiphany"—the manifestation of a divine being. In ancient times, epiphanies were a dime a dozen. You think you are talking to a new friend, and darned if that person doesn't turn out to be a divine apparition. The line between what was divine and what was human was pretty vague back then.
The Iliad is full of epiphanies, where Greeks and Trojans encounter gods and goddesses face to face, and in the Acts of the Apostles, Paul and his disciple Barnabas were mistaken for Zeus and Hermes in what seemed a natural enough mistake. Abraham invites three strangers for tea, and one of the men turns out to be Yahweh, his God, and the other two are angels. Not all that surprising. Just another epiphany.
Diana Eck, a professor at Harvard, describes in her book Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras, her conversation with an old Hindu man about epiphanies. He had heard what seemed to him to be an outlandish rumor—that Christians believe Jesus was the only epiphany. She responded that yes, Christians say he was unique, the only one.
"But how is it possible, he asked, to believe that God showed himself only once, to one people, in one part of the world, and so long ago? The implications were clear on his face: What kind of stingy God would that be? What kind of small-minded, self-centered people would believe in such a God? To him it was clear that the full, embodied disclosure of God to men and women was not only multiple in time and place, but potentially infinite.... I did my best, but between my inadequate Hindi and my inadequate theology, I am afraid he was disappointed in Jesus."
For most of the world, divine encounters are part of everyday life.
So our Magi go traipsing off, following their star, they find the baby Jesus, and yup, wouldn't you know it—he's an epiphany too. And we go off, chasing that star of wonder, star of light, and when we get where we're going, is there an epiphany waiting there for us?
We're Unitarian Universalists. It's up to us. Is the person before us divine, however we define that? It's up to us. Is the moment sacred, however we define that? It's up to us. Is the ground we stand on holy ground, however we define that? It's up to us. We are deemers of the divine, we are creators, we are the dreamers.
In the words of my colleague Patrick O'Neill: "So here's to epiphanies, great and small, whenever they occur. A blessing on all Wise Men and Women, East and West. Here's to the stargazers and pilgrims everywhere."
by Eliza Blanchard, ministerial student
"The only time I got paid the same as a man was when I worked for the city of New Haven as a caseworker," declares avowed feminist and trained anthropologist Joan Steffens. She remains pro-union, believing that unions treat their members more democratically than businesses or bureaucracies. She worked as a social worker in Connecticut for sixteen years, until her retirement, and she recalls that time as the most rewarding part of her working life, which she began as an anthropological researcher.
Independence has always been important for Ms. Steffens: as a young woman in the fifties she shocked her family by traveling across the country alone on a Greyhound bus. Later, after years of making her own living, Joan remembers asking her mother why she'd always kept a room for her in her home. Her mother said. "I didn't think you'd make it!"
But make it she did. Her determination to succeed led her to support herself doing research at Yale University, and later to become a teacher at a community college, and a lobbyist.
Her faith journey, like that of many fellow Unitarian Universalists, has twisted and turned and offered more questions than answers, but has never been dull. She spent time in both the Presbyterian and Episcopalian churches, but years of studying other cultures' religious customs and beliefs left her an agnostic. However, when she attended a Unitarian church one Easter she found that the way they talked about Easter was in line with her thinking.
Later, she learned that the UU religious education curriculum offered the study of world religions and that the local Universalist church housed a chapter of N.O.W.. When a fellow feminist invited her to teach Sunday school, she was hooked. "Just to confuse things," she says, "when I joined the CLF in the 70s, 'Zen Unitarian' was the best description for my beliefs."
Years later, she was diagnosed with Fjögrens Syndrome, a rare autoimmune disease, which left her ill for four years, and which she continues to find debilitating. In her last year of recovery, she says, "I have relived every stage of life and of spiritual need. I'm eager to regain contact with other people—spiritual kin—and to continue my journey." Intellectual and activist, she has found in Unitarian Universalism an openness to thinking, to new ideas and new interpretations, which she finds stimulating and hopeful. "We need to have a faith that embraces all," she argues, "because we all are one."
CLF members are urged to sign up for the CLF-Announce email list. It is very low volume, with messages coming from our minister, the staff, and the list moderators, Linda Melski and Lois Reborne. From time to time, web resources are posted to the list by Lois, along with news about our congregation and the UUA. Go to http://www.uua.org/clf/lists.html.
The Church of the Larger Fellowship has received a prison ministry grant this year from the UU Funding Panel. This grant will allow the CLF to expand its current prison ministry program. Through the Prison Pen Pal Program, free-world CLF members correspond regularly with more than fifty CLF members who are behind bars. Incarcerated CLF members also receive Quest and the UU World, as well as access to UU materials in the CLF Lending Library. The Rev. Anne Hines in California serves as the CLF Prison Chaplain, answering spiritual inquiries by mail from incarcerated folks. The prison grant dovetails with the Study Action Issue voted in at this year's General Assembly: Criminal Justice and Prison Reform. The CLF Pen Pal Program serves as a model to other UU congregations looking to take their first steps in prison ministry work. Pen pal programs are an affordable and personal way to increase understanding between UUs who are incarcerated and free-world UUs. To make this program successful, we need your help. Please contact the CLF's Prison Ministry Coordinator at (617) 948-6167 or clf@uua.org to volunteer to be a pen pal.
that the new Skinner House book, uu&me! Collected Stories, edited by Betsy Williams, editor of uu&me! and former CLF Director of Religious Education, was one of the Top 10 Best Sellers at the UUA Bookstore's booth at General Assembly in Boston. Betsy is also holding a copy of the children's book Waldo Free & True, which she wrote for the Emerson Bicentennial Committee's celebration of Ralph Waldo Emerson's birthday. Both books are available in the CLF library and can be purchased from the UUA Bookstore at www.uua.org/bookstore or by calling 1-800-215-9076.
by Helen Zidowecki, acting director of religious education, Church of the Larger Fellowship
Over 2300 years ago, in a country called Judea (Israel), the Jews were ruled by the Syrians under King Antiochus. Antiochus ordered all the Hebrew people to give up their God, religion, and customs and worship only the Greek Gods. Jews who would not worship as he commanded were severely punished.
But the Jews, under the leadership of Judah Maccabee (the Hammer), fought the Syrians for several years and finally recaptured the Temple from the Syrians. Because the Syrians had occupied the Temple and worshipped other gods there, the Jews had to clean the Temple and rededicate it to their God. To do this, they needed to find oil for the sacred lamp. According to legend, the Jews found only enough oil for the lamp to burn just one night. However, the oil burned in the lamp for eight days and nights, until they could make more oil. These eight days and nights became the festival of Chanukah, meaning rededication, which Jewish people have celebrated ever since in many lands and under many different circumstances.
Chanukah has usually been celebrated more in the home than in the synagogue. On each night of Chanukah the family gathers around the menorah. A menorah is a very special arrangement of nine candles. Eight of the candles are for the eight nights of Chanukah, and the highest candle, known as the Shamash or "servant", is used to light the other candles. On the first night of Chanukah one light is lit, and the number of candles is increased by one each night until all eight are shining brightly. This reminds the people of the miracle that happened so long ago. Special blessings are recited each night as the lights are lit.
The celebration also includes playing games with a dreidel (four-sided spinning top), and eating latkes, which were originally made from cheese, vegetables and fruit but are now basically potato pancakes. There are many excellent resources that tell more about the customs of Chanukah. For other CLF resources, go to "Between Sundays, Early Childhood (4-8 yrs), Jewish and Christian Heritage" on the CLF website, "What Is Chanukah"?
Chanukah is probably one of the best-known Jewish holidays, partially because of its closeness to Christmas. Because the Jewish calendar is different from our Gregorian calendar, Chanukah falls on a different day each year, but almost always in the month of December. This year (Jewish Year 5764), Chanukah begins on the evening of December 19th.
Some of the customs of Christmas, such as such as giving gifts and decorating, have become part of some families' Chanukah celebrations. However, the only traditional gift of the holiday is "gelt," small amounts of money. But Chanukah is a holiday with its own meaning: the celebration of religious freedom, the desire of a people to be able to practice their own faith in a place that is sacred, and a celebration of the miracle of the oil.
Two books are part of my reading at this time of year. One is Elijah's Angel: A Story for Chanukah and Christmas by Michael J. Rosen and Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson (Illustrator), October 1992.
Elijah, a Christian woodcarver, gives a carving of an angel to his young Jewish friend. This conflicts with the Jewish tradition of not having 'images' of sacred beings. However, the boy's parents explain that this gift was given out of love and respect, and that he may accept it. In return, the boy gives Elijah a menorah, which the woodcarver lights every night of Chanukah. There is mutual respect and an understanding that each has his own traditions, that the sharing comes from the heart of these traditions, and that different traditions can meet in love and respect.
The second story is The Christmas Menorahs: How a Town Fought Hate by Janice, D.S.W. Cohn, Bill Farnsworth (Illustrator), March 2001.
When a rock was thrown through the bedroom window of a Jewish home that showed a menorah in the window, the entire community rallied. To show support for the family, pictures of menorahs and actual menorahs appeared in windows around town, drawing people of all religions together in a stand against hatred and prejudice.
Both Chanukah and Christmas are times to remember events in their respective faith histories. And both have of fun and joy and light.
Happy Holidays!
Along with Christian communities, some Unitarian Universalist congregations celebrate Advent during the month of December, eagerly awaiting the birth of Jesus. For Christians, the season calls for reflection as well as joyful anticipation, since the infant they await represents redemption, salvation in the hereafter.
For those of us focused on bringing about salvation in the here and now, the season offers us the opportunity to ask: what are we waiting for? There is no one anticipated event that we expect will save the world. Some of us may take this time to pause, to find the strength or will or hope to carry on. Others may use this time to wrap the warm blanket of faith a little more tightly around ourselves. We may spend more time with Quest, seeking greater connection with our faith community. Recognizing that we are not alone, we might be lifted up by our shared hope for the world.
During this season, we may rest for a while in the glow of holiday lights, but we do not lose sight of our conviction that all must participate in the world's salvation. We will not stop working for all to share life's blessings. We will light our lights, pick an avenue for change, and work in the world, knowing we have the power to make it a better place.
...that you can search the CLF Lending Library online? And the online library is the most up to date version of the catalog. Go to http://h5.uua.org/clf/Cataloguelist.asp
Last updated June 12, 2005
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