by Demi Prentiss

On Jan. 6, The Feast of the Epiphany, we enter the green season of ordinary time, formerly known as the season of Epiphany.  I’ve always liked having a whole season of revelation, or recognition, right there between Christmastide and Lent.  It’s a time when the church focuses on how the life of Jesus cast new light on how God is active in the world.  It’s a time when I try to pay better attention to what God might be doing right in my neighborhood.  I’m drawn to seeking to discover where God is working and, as Jewish scholars have said, seeking to be “covered in the dust of my rabbi” – following Jesus so closely that I’m wearing the dust kicked up by his passing.

Br. Lucas Hall, SSJE, describes this as participating in divine life. He writes, “God is active, because life is active. Life moves. Life responds. God gave life, not as a static dispenser of some good gift, but rather by living, and inviting his whole Creation – including us – to participate in that divine life.”  Often, participation with God takes us down unexpected paths. I think of the magi, after their encounter with the Christ Child, being warned in a dream to avoid returning to Herod.  Matthew’s Gospel tells us they “left for their own country by another road.”

Inspired by the kings’ journey home, singer-songwriter Christopher Grundy offers a spine-stiffening song of resistance  in “Take us Home by Another Way”:

Spirit, take us home, take us home by another way, 
take us long way ’round the tyrants and their schemes, 
Give us strength to walk Show us dreams of a better day 
and we’ll pave the way with justice going home by another way.

Grundy’s song echoes the Black church’s conviction that God “makes a way out of no way,” bringing creativity, agency, and resilience to combat oppression and discrimination.

Steve Garnaas-Holmes offers inspiration for daily life, as we confront the need to go home by another way:

 By another road
         
         They left for their own country by another road.
                  —Matthew 2.12

Life is one different road
      after another. 

Even now, on the twelfth day of Christmas,
       it's not too late to be changed. 

God is seldom on the road we planned
      but one we were forced into.

Jesus' miracles and parables are other roads;
      grace is always a detour.

Holy One, give me faith to let go, to turn, 
      to see grace where there was none.

Give me faith to be nudged, and to trust.
      Give me the courage of new roads.

“Grace is always a detour.” May the words of the poem become our prayer as we walk through the weeks following Epiphany:

“Holy One, give me faith to let go, to turn, to see grace where there was none.
Give me faith to be nudged, and to trust. Give me the courage of new roads.”

_{With thanks to Diana Butler Bass for introducing me to the songs of Christopher Grundy.}