Friday and Saturday is our next Awakening the Creative Spirit session and so I will be very busy the next couple of days and then recovering! We are exploring visual art this time and I am the lead teacher (Betsey and I switch back and forth depending on the art form we are exploring). I am eager to be with the wonderful women in our group again.
Sunday is the Feast of Epiphany in the Christian Church. I love the story of Epiphany: Strangers following a star in the hopes of a sacred encounter, trusting their intuitions, allowing God to be so much bigger than they imagined, finding the holy in unexpected places, listening to the messages of their dreams, carrying sacred gifts with them, and following a trail of light across desert sand.
If, as Herod, we fill our lives with things, and again with things…
If we consider ourselves so unimportant that we must fill every moment of our lives with action,
when will we have the time to make the long, slow journey across the desert as did the Magi?
Or sit and watch the stars as did the shepherds?
Or brood over the coming of the child as did Mary?
For each of us, there is a desert to travel. A star to discover.
And a being within ourselves to bring to life.
-Author Unknown
What is the long slow journey you are being invited to take? What is the star waiting for you to discover? What is being brought to life within you?
The dictionary says epiphany means the sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something. May you be blessed with insight into the hidden and luminous nature of things. In a moment of grace and revelation, may you see more clearly, deeply, and truly than you did just a moment before.
-Christine Valters Paintner