Keep your eye on the star

 

Dear Friends

While today is the Feast of Jesus’ Baptism, my still unsettled heart and mind is remembering last Wednesday, the Feast of the Epiphany. While my attention should have been focused on the star, it was riveted on the television, all day long. I had expected to celebrate that the election of our new president was finally official. Instead, after four years of simmering anger, it (and my blood pressure) boiled over. I was stunned and enraged.

A quote from a Robert Frost poem in a wonderful letter to the editor published in yesterday’s LA Times, helped me get to a better place. “Choose Something Like A Star” ends with these words:

It asks of us a certain height,

So when at times the mob is swayed

To carry blame or praise too far,

We may choose something like a star

To stay our minds on and be staid.

I am postponing the blog I planned for today to simply pray that while our unsettled hearts and minds still grapple with what has happened and what might still happen, we need to also take more time to look to the star to guide us to the source of our faith, our love, and our Light that the darkness cannot dispel.

This comes with continuing prayers during the pandemic (remember that?) for all our brothers and sisters on every front line. And it comes with fervent prayers that no more violence will erupt in the next 11 days (which includes Inauguration Day). And as the confession comes before the absolution, and justice before peace, I'm in the camp that says there needs to be accountability starting at the top (and for those who enabled him), before there can be any true healing. 

John

P.S. My perspective (and blood pressure) is getting back in range, helped by going to online church this morning, filling the birdfeeders and writing this blog, among other things.  Kathleen and I are also looking forward to watching the new PBS series which begins tonight---“All Creatures Great and Small.”