practicing pilgrimage at home and abroad
With Advent nearly upon us and Christmas festivities around us in full swing, Jenn Giles Kemper of Sacred Ordinary Days shares with us how we can infuse spirituality and intention into this season and the seasons to come through following the Liturgical Year.
Be sure to listen all the way to the end—we’re giving away a new Sacred Ordinary Days Liturgical Day Planner to a lucky winner!
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This post on the feast of Epiphany and the Magi it commemorates is an excerpt from the Sacred Seasons Perpetual Liturgical Wall Calendar. Let it guide you on this feast day, season, and beyond when you purchase a calendar of your own in the Journey Shop. Learn more about Epiphany in the Epiphany episode of the Sacred Ordinary Days Podcast »
Like the bright star in the night that it commemorates, it offers guidance for the seasons to come. While many Christian traditions simply mark Epiphany on its feast day of January 6 and return to Ordinary Time until the season of Lent, some traditions are now celebrating it as an entire season lasting from the feast of Epiphany until Ash Wednesday.
Rooted in the Greek word epiphaneia, epiphany means “a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being” or “a moment of sudden revelation or insight.” In the Christian Church, Epiphany marks the manifestation of Christ to the world, particularly through the visitation of the Magi to the Christ child—a journey made by scholars of astronomy and Seekers of the Sacred who followed a radiant star in the heavens in search of Truth.
Instead, the date on my mind as it draws ever nearer is March 5—the day my baby would be due. Just six months ago and only six weeks in, I had a miscarriage. It was my first pregnancy, and we’ve been struggling to get pregnant since.
The twelve days of the Christmas season ended yesterday and today’s feast serves as a capstone to the cycle of light and a group of seasons in which we remember God with us. In the fourth episode of the Sacred Ordinary Days Podcast, Jenn and I look back on our Christmas celebrations, talk about the feast of Epiphany (one of my favorite times in the liturgical year!), and prepare for the season to come.
Listen/download below or through iTunes or your favorite podcast app, and catch up on past episodes here. And if you like what you hear, would you mind sharing it on social media and leaving a review? Here’s how.
Epiphany marks the end of the twelve days of Christmas and is traditionally when we remember the visitation of the three wise men who were guided by a mysterious star to the Christ child. After this visitation, they encountered the Sacred in a dream which altered their path, encouraging them to return home by a different way.
Over the past few years as I’ve learned more about the liturgical seasons and feast days, I’ve been especially intrigued by the feast of Epiphany. I feel like it’s a little gem—an appropriate bookend to the Christmas season and a meaningful way to begin the new year. The word epiphany, from the Greek word epiphaneia, literally means “reveal,” and by definition marries the Sacred with the secular—”a manifestation of the Divine” with “a moment of sudden insight or revelation.”
What I love most about the liturgical calendar is its invitation for our everyday lives. Today, on the feast of Epiphany, we are not only invited to remember the wise men who visited the Christ child so long ago. We are also invited to contemplate the manifestations of the Divine within our own lives—our own places of Sacred Encounter—as well as celebrate our sixth sense of intuition, active in such moments of sudden insight or revelation and sourced from our Inner Witness, the place where the True Self and Divine meet.
After awaiting the Incarnation during the weeks of Advent and celebrating “God with us” during the twelve days of Christmas, Epiphany invites us to participate in the mystery of Divine revelation and celebrate that Sacred Light that guides us from within—both two thousand years before us and in the days, years, and centuries to come. What better time to open ourselves up to the mysteries and revelations of the year ahead?
While ceasing and feasting during the Christmas season, I took some time to reflect on the year that had passed and contemplate the year ahead—a spiritual practice that has become one of my favorite traditions over the past few years. For the second year in a row I was guided by Christine Valters Paintner’s annual “Give Me a Word” series, and as I crossed the threshold from 2014 to 2015, I paid holy attention for an epiphany—a Divine revelation in the form of a word that would inform my journey in the year ahead.
Christine describes this process as similar to the practice of lectio divina, in which we open ourselves up to the presence of God (traditionally while reading a Sacred text) and wait to see what, in her own words, “shimmers.” Last year the word (or phrase) that “shimmered” for me was sink in. It foretold of many desires to be met and many lessons to be learned—areas of growth that no doubt continue into the new year.
My word for this year? Release.
It arrived in early 2015 in the true form of an epiphany—a moment of sudden insight or revelation—and as I’ve held that word in prayer and contemplation over the past few days it’s continued to “shimmer.” I couldn’t imagine a better word for the year ahead. The invitation to release is both a gift and a challenge, which seems to me a good indication that it is indeed an invitation from the Divine—one who seeks to both bless us and guide us on the ever-evolving path of transformation.
In the spirit of Epiphany, I’ll be holding this word close to my heart as 2015 unfolds, following it like the shimmering star that guided the wise men long ago as it leads me on my own mysterious and revelatory journey toward the Divine.
What’s your word for 2015? Any resolutions that will impact your journey? Share your response to the questions or the post in the comments.
PS: Today marks the first anniversary of my book, Pilgrim Principles: Journeying with Intention in Everyday Life! Help me celebrate by passing it on to someone you think might enjoy it. Send them here »
PPS: Tomorrow (1/7) is the last day to receive $10 off when you register for my “Pilgrim Principles” course at The Center at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Seattle, WA. I’d love to have you join me! Learn more and register »