In This Week of New Beginnings

I wasn’t even looking for a poem. 

In this week of new beginnings and promises, of cautious hope and restrained joy, I just wanted to memorialize a turning. 

In this new year, during this week of new beginnings, we will have two new world leaders, one, blessedly, a mixed race woman, beginning to take on our broken old world, and we have new vaccines beginning to take on our persistently raging pandemic.

Why even the Catholic Church is taking some steps forward, now officially permitting what so many of our parishes have been doing for years: including women and girls as acolytes and lectors. Cautious and restrained are the perfect words to describe these actions – but still.

The way forward is not clear, but it certainly feels guided by hope, and the poem that found me when I wasn’t looking says this more beautifully than I ever could. 

Blessing of the Magi

There is no reversing
this road.
The path that bore you here
goes in one direction only,
every step drawing you
down a way
by which you will not
return.

You thought arrival
was everything,
that your entire journey
ended with kneeling
in the place
you had spent all
to find.

When you laid down
your gift,
release came with such ease,
your treasure tumbling
from your hands
in awe and
benediction.

Now the knowledge
of your leaving
comes like a stone laid
over your heart,
the familiar path closed
and not even the solace
of a star
to guide your way.

You will set out in fear
you will set out in dream

but you will set out

by that other road
that lies in shadow
and in dark.

We cannot show you
the route that will
take you home;
that way is yours
and will be found
in the walking.

But we tell you
you will wonder
at how the light you thought
you had left behind
goes with you,
spilling from
your empty hands,
shimmering beneath
your homeward feet,
illuminating the road
with every step
you take.

Jan Richardson

The Painted Prayerbook blog

Happy new week and month and year to all of you.