We're Following The Star, 6

David:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

......
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

T. S. Eliot
from The Four Quartets

Image: Table of the Magi by David Orth

Jim:

I think my epiphany is 61 years in the making ...a very very slow epiphany: The star is family ...the star is old friends (like Jesus and Mary) ...the star is new friends (like David and Robin) ...the star is love. LOVE!

Image: La Sagrada Familia - The Sacred (or Holy) Family by James Mangum

Robin:

just saying so

sometimes makes all

the difference

the star is always there

to be followed to be

watched

just saying so

reminds us

commits us

Image: Just Saying So by C. Robin Janning

We're Following The Star, 5

Christmas now. It’s not just one star, but many stars. Too many stars to count. It is a great light pulsing, beaming from every direction. Light for the Christmas that is born in every heart …in every dawn that pushes away the darkness.

David:

Jim:

Robin:

A new year arrives during these twelve days of Christmas, bearing a spark that promises enough light for all ...however and in whichever direction we travel.

We're Following The Star, 4

David:

I feel a little out of touch again

And exhausted and wind burned
But now I feel well on down the road …

So (whispering softly to the gentle,
Frightened bird of our fluttering hearts),
Be still, and know the
vast varied darknesses of God.

Do not flinch from any Truth
breathing out whatever breath.

Jim:

Epiphany: A Christian feast celebrating the manifestation of the divine nature of Jesus to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi.

Advent began on my birthday this year. The next day, November 30, Robin, David, and I began “following the star.” Today, December 13, my epiphany arrived with the first line of Robin’s poem: “It’s about Mary.” What should have been obvious to me for many years became obvious. My art has always been about Mary.

I have painted her and carved her hundreds of times. With and without the Christ child. Each time my art takes me away from her, she calls me back. Her image calms me; comforts me. Despite all my doubts about so-called traditional religion, her hold on me has never loosened.

I was a psychology major in college, but came to believe all of it was a crock. Except for the theory of the mother-son dynamic. I was not close to my mother, or should I say, she was not close to me. So, I suppose that Mary became my surrogate mother. I was raised in the Catholic church and began attending Catholic school when I was five. So I saw Mary a lot. At a most impressionable age and during a most trying time, I saw her almost daily. The incredible statues, paintings, stained glass windows. She always had a beatific smile…just for me.

So today I will start my new carving. A giant cypress knee in which I can already see Mary holding baby Jesus in her arms. It is going to be a good day.

Robin:

it’s about Mary
right now
this star we follow
about finding
the transformation
point where
we say yes
like she said
yes

We're Following The Star, 3

David:

I woke up from one those nightmares that come out of “nowhere”. I knew it had something to do with Following the Star – or rather Not Following the Star – which is in fact where I have to start.

I live on ten acres. There is no development in sight. But when I walked out into the front yard of my dream, there were some one hundred No Trespassing signs marking a convoluted circle around the house. Some developer had come in the night and staked out a ridiculous new property line for me and clearly they were flaunting this barrier and putting it in my face. A row of yellow signs divided my driveway in two, they left me a patch of grass outside the front door. On one side of the house the signs were staked right up to the foundation line. I was stunned. I imagine if I had gone back in the house, I would have found the signs in there, too – blocking my way to the bathroom.

Last time I reflected on this journey, I managed to get out of my cave and make it up into the starlit view from the tower. Now I’m back down on ground level and opening my front door. Maybe I was ready to start out on a journey. Maybe I was just letting out the cat. Regardless, some developer is out there blocking my way, blocking my view, and advertising their claim on me. I pulled out a couple of signs and threw them down, but it would not be that easy. Something inside knows the signs are mine – I allowed them to be there – I am ‘the developer’. I live in this world of illusion and preoccupation with myself. I’m terrified of getting old, or loosing the studio, or the house, of not affording my friend-wife’s medications, or having my art dry up from the inside. I’ve allowed Netflix and caffeine into my space (again) to make their claims and set me down on the couch-of-my-life. These are all the low-level comfort/addictions of a typical middle class life – and the unconscious fear of the unknown that goes along with it. The dream is sign – a sign made up of signs. I’m not being clever, I’m just getting it.

The Three Wise Men, the Kings of the Orient, represent a kind of inner soul bravery of spirit, a curiosity that trespasses barriers, an expansive outlook, a search for our Origin that leads out into far flung territories, something that follows a Star. This is all rung out of us here in the West – in the West-of-our-lives – doesn’t matter if you are reading this in China – we all have a ‘West’ – a place of safety and drunkenness with safety. A place in the self with a lot of very human preoccupations and No Trespassing signs. The signs and barriers are there - even when we don’t see them - especially when we don’t see them.

Who is it that follows a Star? I know what follows a pop song, a pretty woman, the warmth of the sun. But who or what follows a Star? What travels in the night sharing the road with thieves and vampires? Who were these stargazers from the east who seemed to know something, who set out from their high towers, who crossed borders at will? We domesticate them in crèches, Christmas plays, gold foil, and colorful robes. But they remind me that not all who seek the Child, who carry word of the Child, are churched, catechized, circumcised, or circumspect.

I roll over and put my feet on the cold floor. The cat wants out.

Image: Wounded Bird Table by David Orth


Jim:

Advent = Arrival
 
Arrivals, by definition, are momentary states. They last an instant. Arrivals are both ethereal and ephemeral. A letter arrives. A child arrives. A Christ child arrives. We try to find ways to hang on them. We read letters over and over. We take photographs and make scrapbooks of and for our children. We go to church, we pray, we celebrate Christmas.
 
This has always been my struggle. Trying to stay in the moment. I am always looking ahead. To the next project; the next adventure. When my first child was born, my wife and I looked forward to his arrival. For different reasons, I’m pretty sure. But, when he was born she was able to stay in the moment. To hold him and…just love him.
 
I was already looking down the road. To when he would be able to talk to me. Start laughing at my corny jokes. When he would first play t-ball. When he would bring home his first girlfriend. Would I be afraid when he got hurt or became ill?
 
I did the same with my first daughter when she was born. Amazed at actually having a baby girl. Amazed at how it all happened. Then, with the arrival, the looking ahead. And the same with my last two daughters. They’re all grown now. Wonderful adults. It went by too fast, while I was thinking about the future. My wife enjoyed and savored every moment with them. She still does. We’re divorced now.
 
The advent of Advent brings it all home. This trip with Robin and David will be a rather melancholy one. Not in a bad way. It has made me actually stop and look back on a wonderful life. I am allowing myself to be nostalgic.
 
I love the Nativity story. How Christ’s arrival was foretold. How men, the powerful and the meek, followed a star. His arrival was over in a moment. But His story will live forever. It would be nice if we could hold onto it for the entire year. I wonder if Jesus minds that we take Him for granted sometimes?
 
My thoughts are scattered now. All the pictures in my head are a bit out of focus. Robin and David, my path has not become clear. No star yet. But, I am looking forward to this trip. A new destination lies ahead. A new arrival.
 
Image: Following The Star, by James Mangum
 
 
Robin:
 

daylight hours
the star leads more
indirectly
now I trace its
path its rising
and falling
in the faces and
places around me…

Image: Dancing Through Shadows by C. Robin Janning

We're Following The Star, 2

David:

I spent an hour yesterday sloshing through a vast scrap yard looking for a headlight for my van. It was pretty much a scene out of Mad Max – Mad Max after a long Midwestern drizzle. The sun and the mud were in my eyes and I couldn’t see any stars – biblical or otherwise. The day before yesterday I had hit a deer on the road – no way to miss it. It ran off and I hope it is ok, but it knocked out my headlamp and put me in a fresh funk – a simmering mix of guilt, anger, and distress. Not a big rolling boil – not my style – just a simmer. But still I’ve definitely got something cooking. I see that I have been taking little moments like this personally. Seems like there are a lot them lately. So this is the cave in which I begin my journey. I’d love a star, but not sure I can see stars from “here.”

That’s a start actually. Just seeing myself laying here in bed, pinned down at first by self-pity. A kind of straightforward confession without the groveling. Staying here with myself and letting God see me. Fortunately, you don’t have to sit in a particular way to meditate (though sometimes it helps). Staying with it, but somehow no longer “in” it. A star has risen inside me. This for me now is prayer. Not asking God to fix things – that just hasn’t been working for me. But just watching myself lying here things cleared up for a while. Not getting great visions of the Cosmos or the Child. Just some starlight. It illumines the night. Not permanently, but for a while. So now I know there are stars and there are also places from which it is difficult to see them.

So today, the residual starlight is still there. It’s not a pinpoint in the sky. It’s not brilliant. It’s just a sense of a gentle light – a place inside that is not pinned down in a cave. I’m not on the road yet. But today I’m out of the cave and up in the watchtower. It’s better up here. In the starlight.

Image: Watch Tower Urn by David Orth

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Jim:

Since we are speaking of kings, Peter King, the sportswriter, has a featurette in each of his Monday Morning Quarterback columns: Factoid of the Week That May Interest Only Me. I will paraphrase Mr. King with my Factoids of Advent That May Interest Only Me:

Being an English major and a writer, words fascinate me. I have been away from the church, any church, for a long time now. So when we are talking about Advent, I felt a good place for me to start was refreshing myself with the definition. I went to Merriam Webster Online Dictionary and found this:

Main Entry: Ad•vent

Pronunciation: \ˈad-ˌvent, chiefly British -vənt\

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English, from Medieval Latin adventus, from Latin, arrival, from advenire

Date: 12th century

1 : the period beginning four Sundays before Christmas and observed by some Christians as a season of prayer and fasting

2 a : the coming of Christ at the Incarnation b : second coming

3 not capitalized : a coming into being or use

Two things which I did not know jumped out at me: Advent also means the Second Coming; and it comes from the Latin, adventus, meaning arrival.

So, never one to leave well enough alone, I broke the Latin, adventus, down into it's etymological least common denominators (if that is even a concept). In Latin, ad carries the idea of "in the direction of". And ventus, in Latin, means wind, rumor, or favor. So reassembling the word from its Latin roots, adventus becomes "in the direction of the wind", or "in the direction of a rumor", or "in the direction of favor". Based on the story in Matthew 2: 1-12, any of these definitions of adventus would work quite well, e.g.: 7Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him."

And still, I would not let it go...so I looked up the current colloquial definition of "ad": a public notice...and a definition of "vent": to give often vigorous or emotional expression to ...putting those 2 together kind of works too.

And there you have it: My Factoids of Advent That May Interest Only Me

Image: Star by Jim Mangum

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Robin:

it’s not what I’ll take

but what I must leave behind…
oh, look at the moon

I’ll take everything
and just walk slowly

Image: My Blue Moon by C. Robin Janning

We're Following The Star, 1

In that innocent moment, fences down and doors unguarded, an idea arrived. Unexpected. Not entirely uninvited. Call it radical or call it risky or call it an interesting quest… We’re following The Star.

“We” is David, Jim, and Robin.

Challenged and inspired by our own internal and external constellations we’re following the star across (neither down, nor up) an Advent path. We bring our own maps and tools and gifts, committing to the journey and to sharing.

These words by Joan Chittester carried the idea and brought us together for this journey.

“…Waiting — that cold, dry period of life when nothing seems to be enough and something else beckons within us — is the grace that Advent comes to bring. It stands before us, within us, pointing to the star for which the wise ones from the East are only icons of ourselves.”

So, as respectfully as we can, we salute those icons and then just as respectfully begin to diverge, branch out, make a trail.

Here we go.