Favourite Worn and Shabby Domestic Items

God help us to live slowly:
To move simply:
To look softly: To allow emptiness:
To let the heart create for us.
Amen.

A bit of Leunig Summer!

The Journey Of The Magi | T.S. Elliott

This next Monday (6 January) marks the feast of Epiphany. Epiphany is a feast celebrating the 'shining forth' or revelation of God to mankind in human form, in the person of Jesus Christ. The observance had its origins in the eastern Christian church, and included the birth of Jesus Christ; the visit of the Magi (traditionally Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar) who arrived in Bethlehem; and all of Jesus' childhood events, up to his baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist. The feast was initially based on (and viewed as a fulfillment of) the Jewish Feast of Lights. This was fixed on January 6.

T.S. Elliott wore an interesting poem reflecting on the journey of the Magi to Bethlehem:

Happy New Year!

“ I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year
'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.'

And he replied, 'Go into the darkness
and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!'

So I went forth and finding the Hand of God
Trod gladly into the night
He led me towards the hills
And the breaking of day in the lone East.

So heart be still!
What need our human life to know,
If God hath comprehension?

In all the dizzy strife of things
Both high and low,
God hideth his intention ..."

Many of us will have heard the above words at some time in our life, written by Minnie Louise Haskins in 1908. Much later to become famous by King George VI reading it as part of his first Christmas message to the nation at the start of the Second World War.

At the start of this new, uncertain and unfathomed year, may your hand remain in the hand of God!

Pax Romana or Pax Jesus?

Some years ago now, we had a great trip through the UK. As part of our road trip we drove north to Hexam and visited the ruined remains of Emperor Hadrian’s great wall. It is quite something to stand on what is still a huge and solid stone fortification and stare East to West marvelling at how it winds on and on for countless miles protecting what was then the Roman Empire from the wild Scots hordes. My daughter had a grand time mocking her mother on her barbarian ancestry till we pointed out the obvious!

I stood for some time gazing south across England and imaging the channel and a whole continent beyond that. Back in ~120AD this was all Rome! This was an empire that spanned the known world. The legions and their families and slaves had lived in barracks on these windswept rolling hills all paid allegiance to Caesar as their Lord. Caesaris est Dóminus. 

Interestingly, about a hundred years before the wall was built, Jesus was born and Augustus Octavian had been emperor for a quarter of a century. He was King of kings – A gift from the gods! He ruled from Gibraltar to Jerusalem and from Britain to the Black Sea. He had done what no one had done for two hundred years before him: he had brought peace to the wider, Roman world – Pax Romana.

Christmas | Michael Leunig