The new year has begun, but many old challenges remain.

We reflect on how the light of Christ's appearance (epiphany) alters our view of the challenges we face.

It is a strange day to celebrate the splendor of God in the Child Jesus whom we adored at Christmas just a few weeks ago. This week a year ago, a nascent novel virus is bursting out across the world. Today we mourn lives lost: nearly 400,000 in the US, and 2 million worldwide. Millions more lives have been affected. This morning as I write, our President is impeached again, following violent defilement of our state citadel, the Capital Building.

Yet, I am reminded in the Hymn for today’s Lauds, Nox et Tenebrae, that Christ the Lord has come and now the work of Christmas begins

Darkness of night and evil things,

Confusion of the world, give way,

Light enters and the day is here;

Disperse, for Christ the Lord has come.

Theologian, author, and activist Howard Thurman (1899-1981) was one who put action to words. Within his prolific writings, we find this call to action, even in the shadows of the setting Epiphany sun:

When the song of the angels is stilled,

when the star in the sky is gone,

when the kings and princes have gone home,

when the shepherds are back with the flocks,

then the work of Christmas begins:

to find the lost,

to heal those broken in spirit,

to feed the hungry,

to release the oppressed,

to rebuild the nations,

to bring peace among all peoples,

to make a little music with the heart…

...and to radiate the Light of Christ, every day, in every way, in all that we do and in all that we say. Then the work of Christmas begins. Let it begin with us. --by Jan

On New Years Day, a Facebook friend posted that she chooses a focus word (such as grace or patience) at the beginning of each year. For 2021, she chose a two-word phrase: “Fear Not.”

Well, the first two weeks of this year have certainly proved that choice to be fitting! U.S. coronavirus deaths topping 4000 in a single day; a violent mob disrupting a joint session of Congress; a President impeached. There is plenty going on to make us anxious and afraid. Fear not? Easier said than done, these days.

“Don’t be afraid,” to my ear, sounds too much like “You shouldn’t feel what you’re feeling!” Which is why I like the phrasing of Scott Cairns in his poem, “The Death of Death”[1]: Cairns writes, “Put fear aside.” That’s it. Acknowledge fear. Name your fear. Then set it aside, and go on living your life, following where God calls.

I liked Cairns’ poem so much, I wrote my own, back in 2019:

“Put fear aside.” It is,

it seems, a choice.

“Fear not” – not likely.

“Be not afraid” –

beyond the frail powers

of my fragile self.

Terror. Angst.

Anxiety. Fear.

Trepidation.

I need a whole

thesaurus

to scribe my

many fears.

“Have no fear”? Maybe,

so long as “have”

is understood

as “to have and to hold.”

Put fear aside;

you are not wed.

Acknowledge fear.

Greet fear and

look it in the eye.

But never let fear

hold you in its

icy embrace.

Put fear aside. It is,

it seems, a choice.

And the choosing

is both a courage

and a grace.

[1] Scott Cairns, “The Death of Death,” in Love’s Immensity: Mystics on the Endless Life (Paraclete Press, 2007), p. 14.

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