DAY ELEVEN--FESTIVAL OF THE THREE KINGS/EVE OF THE EPIPHANY

DAY ELEVEN : EVE OF EPIPHANY/FESTIVAL OF THE THREE KINGS

 (Celebrate the Magi, Herod, the slaughtered innocents, and the Baby Jesus in you!)

 

The Eleventh Day of Christmas celebrates the Magi, the “Three” Kings/Wise Men/Astrologers who gave gifts to the baby Jesus.  For this reason, the 11th Day carries the additional title of "Little Christmas" (but, as we will see, in some countries IT is the Big Christmas, or at least Big Christmas Eve).  Despite our mathematical certainty about the 3 Magi, even to the point of assigning a name to each, the number of these…persons is not clarified in the gospels, only the number of gifts.  Nevertheless, legend fills in the blanks where myth leaves off, and we assume one gift per Wise Man--therefore, 3 Wise Men.   

So then there were three, their secret identities revealed in this way: Caspar, a Turk,  is old, normally with a white beard, and gives the gold. Melchior is middle-aged, giving frankincense from his native Arabia, and Balthazar is a young man with myrrh from Yemen, although beginning in the 1100’s the Yemeni has been replaced by a dark-skinned Ethiopian (because black lives mattered!).

Long story short, Herod tried to get the Three to give the Baby Jesus up to him, but a dream warned them off, and Herod then massacred everyone’s newborns after the Magi had skipped town.  Even so, the poor babes’ fate is traditionally commemorated on the Third Day, Childermass, December 28th, when it could have been no earlier than Jan. 7^th—if we take the Birth on the 25^th, December, as gospel (For the whole story on the Three Wise Men’s encounter with the bloodthirsty and paranoid Herod, see my blog on the 3^rd Day of Christmas—Childermass/Holy Innocents).  

 

A thought experiment: let’s say that Herod represents the “ego”.  At its worst, this “egotistical” part of the psyche is a constellation of all our entrenched habits (and the ruts they are stuck in).  This part of self, a sort of gatekeeper, really, has no or limited access to vast areas of the soul-self unless it steps aside and watches the show—when the ego would rather run the show.  Humility, Zen, mystical experience, true reverence, any new habit, or even mental peace may threaten the ego; and in fact it by reflex thwarts any such novelties.  The overblown ego thinks that it is king, and fails to realize that it is merely a small but bossy part of the brain-self in need of the support and resources of the other 99.9% of the whole human being for its very existence.

Further, say that the Nativity represents a breakthrough of heroic energy: a bundle of joy, the result of spiritual and psychological Stuff which is wider, deeper, higher and more central, all at once, than anything ever experienced before.  The “innocents” whom Herod slaughtered represent ideas flowing from this new and greater way of being.  The first reaction of the ego is Herod’s: to kill off those ideas.  Stab them!  Slaughter them.  Or, what’s a more likely scenario today: set them in front of the TV, and hope they go away.  But, in casting such a wide net, Herod confuses the ideas with their Source, the all encompassing Self, with a capital “S”—who gets away, because it is basically the unkillable center of all being.

I had always thought that “Coventry Carol,” is hauntingly beautiful, and that the “bye, bye” part was not a literal goodbye but some medieval word with a different meaning, or a rhythmic nonsense syllable.  If only: in this song, Hebrew mothers are bidding their barely-born and newly murdered sons adieu forever….

Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child,

Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Lullay, thou little tiny Child,

Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

…So it’s heart-rending, actually.  I need not milk it, but it’s also quite sad the number of divine stirrings within—intuitions or feelings of big love or noble actions—that have been ignored in a person’s life, and whose time may have come and gone.  What ideas arising from your very core are you killing off this lovely Christmas season?  Which of her baby inspirations is your Great Internal Mother grieving?—To put it another way, if you were completely daring and secure, if you could not fail, what would you do (or not do)?

The story says that the Source of all those anxiety provoking promptings will not be killed, which means the ideas will keep on coming, which means you have to engage in some compulsive behavior or other, or they will catch up with you (‘Tis the season, traditionally, of compulsive shopping—but why limit yourself to the last of December; or, for that matter, to just shopping?).  When they do bite you on the donkey, you will realize that you-as-ego are not a king at all, more like the bossy clerk at a local hotel which may or may not be The Ritz. 

What’s more,  if you are lucky you will realize also that this is a very good thing, that there is more to you than the dog tricks you have learned to perform in response to the old master, fear.  Perhaps you will get that “there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” and you will see that the Wonder Child, the conduit of all those inspired promptings, is constantly reborn within us where the humble meets the exalted (where angels, for example, fly singing their hearts out over a barn full of the sweet stink of animal manure).

 

To support this Birth within yourself, make a habit of doing something every day that feeds your soul-self, your Newborn King (or Queen): follow your Bliss; remain quiet and still (don’t just do something—sit there!); feed yourself ideas that are hard to accept but are nevertheless true, like “the Divine lives in me”; if you find yourself in a rut, leave it the same way you would leave an unhealthy yet familiar relationship (kicking and screaming, if you’re like me); give up a resentment; meditate on what unprecedented action you might take (or precedented one you might not take), and see what bubbles up.  

 The Christmas Story, and the Festival of the Kings in particular, would have us pay attention to our dreams...Didn’t dreams protect the Divine Child’s life, not once but twice, and keep the Holy Family from splitting up before it even got off the ground?  Of what are our dreams warning us, or what in our lives are they asking us to feed?  Write down your dreams, check out a book on dream interpretation, and start figuring it out….

[Pictured: Joseph hears the angel's warning about Herod's massacre.]

 

Last night, I had a dream about an elite Brazilian athlete (jiu-jitsu, probably) whose woman was "with child".  For some reason, they intended to abort the child, and I made all kinds of plans to adopt it, instead.  I thought, what a waste.  The child has a great chance of being athletic and beautiful.

I puzzled over this, wrote down some possible associations, but nothing clicked until I saw an affirmation my wife had prominently displayed on the shelf over the kitchen sink:

"I am a divine creation, healthy and whole.  I praise every part of my body for its intrinsic ability to heal and restore."

I realized that feeling healthy and whole and beautiful is something foreign to me.  My healthy, beautiful Self might as well be in Brazil, hidden in the womb of someone I have never met and whose language I don't speak.  This dream is telling me to "adopt" that language, and that attitude.  The time for fear and self loathing is over.  The Christ is born--or the Buddha Nature, the Atman, the capital-S "Self," if you prefer.  The Wonder Child or the essential Self is a concept that transcends any particular religion, or even the lack thereof--or even the final frontier: one's habitual attitudes towards oneself.

The Wonder Child being born can represent almost any unrealized potential.  I am fifty-three, and nothing will make me 18 again, but I can certainly do some yoga, or whatever, and feel ten years younger in an hour or two.  So I will do that, and repeat the affirmation to myself today: you see, I am; and you, dear reader, are a divine creation, healthy and whole.

In naturalistic tribes, when a person gets depressed, they might be asked any of four questions:

When in your life did you stop singing?
When in your life did you stop dancing?
When in your life did you stop being enchanted by stories (including your own life story)?
When in your life did you start being uncomfortable with silence?”

 Follow the clues, if you are depressed, and buck the trend, I say.

READING LIST: “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry, available in PDF form here: http://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Henry/Gift_Magi.pdf

PLAYLIST, available on YouTube here:   https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdartdqjh56BHFWctTEfNRfx2M5Qx6FBF

We Three Kings Of Orient Are : Kings College, Cambridge

Barenaked Ladies - "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings" Feat. Sarah McLachlan

James Blunt - Wisemen lyrics

 O Come, All Ye Faithful - Pentatonix

O Come, All Ye Faithful (Adeste Fideles) at Westminster Abbey

My King and My God (Wise Men's Song) - Todd Koeppen

Such Wise Men! - The Glory of Christmas Musical

What Child Is This? - Martina Mcbride

Christian Rap; The Cross Movement: Wiseman (Christmas Rap, Jesus, Nativity)

A Feast of Songs - Journey of the Magi

Peter, Paul & Mary - The Magi (The Heart Of Man's A Palace)

Anaïs Mitchell - Song of the Magi