January 6: "New Calendar," Epiphanies, New Year

Billy Collins on new calendars and years . . . 

New Calendar

by:  Billy Collins

The poem of next year--

every week a line, 

every month a stanza,

and a tiny sun 

rising and setting

in every numbered square.

The poem of next year--that's what Collins calls his new calendar.  At the beginning of every January, we start composing this poem, week by week, line by line, month by month, and stanza by stanza.  We have no idea whether the poem will end up being a love sonnet or elegy.  A psalm of praise or a psalm of sorrow.  Each new year is a revelation.

This weekend, Christian churches celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany:  the appearance of the magi and the unveiling of hope for a broken world.  There are tons of synonyms for "epiphany":  insight, realization, oracle, discovery, shock.  Each of these words is about peeling the scales from your eyes and seeing the universe clearly, maybe for the first time.

Not all epiphanies are earthshattering.  In fact, most, I would say, are pretty ordinary and personal.  For instance, realizing you don't like guacamole.  Or that Carrie Underwood's "Underneath the Tree" is a better Christmas song than Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas."  (Listen to it if you don't believe me.)

After having a week off from work and teaching, I have come to some epiphanies about myself.  I am just one step away from being Howard Hughes.  I enjoy being by myself, and large groups of people make me incredibly anxious.  Now, I'm not going to lock myself in my bedroom and fill empty milk containers with urine.  Nor will I let my fingernails and toenails grow so long that they need to be registered as concealed weapons.  However, having minimal human interaction sounds quite appealing at the start of this presidential election year.

As I emerge like a wintering groundhog from my week of blissful disconnection, I know that my life will become very complicated very quickly on Monday, and there's no way I can avoid it.  That's the way things have been for a very long time for me.  Peace and quiet are distant cousins who live in a remote Scandinavian village without internet or cellular service.

But I have one more day before my vacation ends and 2024 begins in earnest.  I will still be ignoring most texts and phone calls tomorrow.  I may even wear sunglasses and a fake moustache when I go grocery shopping.  And, if you insist on posting Trumpian conspiracy theories about stolen elections and the "patriots" who stormed the U. S. Capitol Building and killed police officers, I will most likely unfriend and block you on my social media.  Not because I think everybody should agree with me 100% of the time.  I just don't want racists, homophobes, xenophobes, transphobes, and traitors as friends or acquaintances.

These are Saint Marty epiphanies for tonight and the coming year.

January 6: Epiphanies, T. S. Eliot, "The Journey of the Magi"

This weekend marks the Feast of the Epiphany.  The official end of the Christmas celebration in Christian churches.

Of course, I could wax philosophic about quests and seeking wisdom and enlightenment.  I could also speak about other quests--the quest for the winning Powerball ticket tonight, the quest for true love or happiness, the quest for health or thinness.  It all sort of mixes up in my mind.

Traditionally, an epiphany is the attainment of some kind of knowledge that you don't already possess.  That's the symbolism of the journey of the Magi, isn't it?  A journey toward something wondrous and life-changing.  Whether that something is material, intellectual, or spiritual depends upon the person.

Tonight, when I play the pipe organ for Mass, I will be thinking about what my epiphany will be this year.  Perhaps I will learn that money can't buy happiness (I sort of already know that).  Or that the greatest treasures in my life is the warm body of my wife, the laughter of my son, the trust of my daughter.  Or that life is short and sometimes difficult and, ultimately, all about love.

Saint Marty is open to any and all epiphanies today.

The Journey of the Magi

by:  T. S. Eliot

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

May 10: Many Marvelous Moments, Epiphanies, Joyful and Grateful and Sad

Billy couldn't read Tralfamadorian, of course, but he could at least see how the books were laid out--in brief clumps of symbols separated by stars.  Billy commented that the clumps might be telegrams.

"Exactly," said the voice.

"They are telegrams?"

"There are no telegrams on Tralfamadore.  But you're right:  each clump of symbols is a brief, urgent message--describing a situation, a scene.  We Tralfamadorians read them all at once, not one after the other.  There isn't any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep.  There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects.  What we love in our books are the depth of many marvelous moments seen all at one time."

This description of Tralfamadorian novels intrigues me.  What Vonnegut has the alien describe sounds very much like poetry to me.  The careful juxtaposition of brief, urgent lines, describing a situation or scene, all with the goal of producing "an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep."  Of course, Vonnegut could also be describing Slaughterhouse, with its brief passages describing different times in Billy's life, looping back-and-forth in time and space.  The result:  not a plotted narrative, but a marvelous moment.  An epiphany.

I love epiphanies--sudden moments of undeniable clarity.  They don't happen very often in my life.  When I proposed marriage to my wife, that was an epiphany.  I realized that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this person in front of me.  When I held my infant daughter for the first time.  I surrendered myself to this little, squirming, screaming creature.  Ditto my son.  Big epiphanies.

Last night, I was saying prayers with my son before he went to sleep.  He was goofing around, laughing, throwing pillows.  Being an eight-year-old boy.  I looked at him and felt myself cracking open like a fault line.  I was overwhelmed with a realization of how much I loved him.  It kind of left me speechless for a few moments.

Now, that may not seem like some deep revelation--a father loving his son.  Nothing surprising about that.  I think what overwhelmed me last night was simply how crushing that love is.  In just a few moments, my mind had a Tralfamadorian experience.  I went from my son's birth to his first birthday, first day of school, first Christmas program, and beyond.  I pushed forward to girlfriends and high school and graduation and college.  I was joyful and grateful and sad, all at once.  That was the epiphany.

It lasted only a minute or so.  Then my son raised his butt and farted at me.  That brought me back to Earth reality.

I'm not sure I could live in that state constantly--always aware of the vicissitudes of time and love.  It was wonderful when it happened, but, for the rest of the night, I was slightly melancholy because I realized that I couldn't protect my son from the disappointment and pain that sometimes comes with growing up.  That bothered me.  I will not be able to protect my kids from heartbreak and illness and death.

My parents have lost two of their children in the last three years.  I can't imagine that kind of grief.  The day my sister died at my parents' house, my mother sat by my sister's hospital bed, held her hand after she had passed.  My mother talked to her, told my sister how much she loved her.  She just kept speaking quietly, sometimes touching my sister's face.

There was grace in that moment, but it's a grace I hope I never have to experience personally.

Tonight, Saint Marty is thankful for the epiphanies of his son and daughter.