Epiphany

It is Epiphany night. . .Twelfth Night. . .Today marks twelve days since Chriistmas. . .did you know that's where the song came from??? So, what does Epiphany mean? It has a couple of meanings:

Epiphany (holiday), a Christian holiday on January 6 celebrating the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus and thus bringing the light of God's love to the Gentiles (us). . .and
Epiphany (feeling), the sudden realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something.

We will now be in the season of Epiphany until Ash Wednesday. . .all the way into late February this year!

I had the sudden realization and comprehension tonight, my first night back on Weight Watchers, why I have been eating and drinking so much. . .oh, by the way, Pat worked overtime again tonight due to an "ice storm" that never came and so I was home alone with Aidan! Sheesh! That kid will wear a Mama out!

But, all is well now. He is sleeping upstairs, Daddy is home and I have a little free time to talk to you all!

I didn't do as badly on my weight as I thought. I am only 8 pounds over my goal--turns out my scale is weighing 1.6 pounds heavy! I knew it seemed wrong when I first bought it! I was sooo upset then, too. So, now I have 6 pounds to go until I don't have to pay every week. Not too bad! I can do that by summer! I did really good today and am hopeful I will continue to do really good.

Aidan is a trip. He is feeling really good and is counting to 11 consistantly now. He is saying "Aidan Harrison" when asked his full name and if you ask him how old he is, he will say "Two and a HALF." He even tried to tie his shoes last night!

And tonight he decided to "putina gas in Aya's beep beep."
It's crazy how his imagination is so incredibly active and full!

Our church ordinarily has a celebration on Epiphany, or Twelfth Night. We are asked to bring our trees, greenery and any other live (or formerly live) Christmas item to a parishoners farm where everything is piled up and then we have a bonfire, drink hot chocolate and eat left over Christmas cookies. It was scheduled for tonight but was cancelled due to the "impending ice storm." Next year!

And so I leave you with a poem by William Carlos William called "Burning the Christmas Greens." It seems appropriate! God Bless! and let me know what your true love brought you!

Burning the Christmas Greens
by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

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Their time past, pulled down
cracked and flung to the fire
--go up in a roar

All recognition lost, burnt clean
clean in the flame, the green
dispersed, a living red,
flame red, red as blood wakes
on the ash--

and ebbs to a steady burning
the rekindled bed become
a landscape of flame

At the winter's midnight
we went to the trees, the coarse
holly, the balsam and
the hemlock for their green

At the thick of the dark
the moment of the cold's
deepest plunge we brought branches
cut from the green trees

to fill our need, and over
doorways, about paper Christmas
bells covered with tinfoil
and fastened by red ribbons

we stuck the green prongs
in the windows hung
woven wreaths and above pictures
the living green. On the

mantle we built a green forest
and among those hemlock
sprays put a herd of small
white deer as if they

were walking there. All this!
and it seemed gentle and good
to us. Their time past,
relief! The room bare. We

stuffed the dead grate
with them upon the half burnt out
log's smouldering eye, opening
red and closing under them

and we stood there looking down.
Green is a solace
a promise of peace, a fort
against the cold (though we

did not say so) a challenge
above the snow's
hard shell. Green (we might
have said) that, where

small birds hide and dodge
and lift their plaintive
rallying cries, blocks for them
and knocks down

the unseeing bullets of
the storm. Green spruce boughs
pulled down by a weight of
snow--Transformed!

Violence leaped and appeared.
Recreant! roared to life
as the flame rose through and
our eyes recoiled from it.

In the jagged flames green
to red, instant and alive. Green!
those sure abutments . . . Gone!
lost to mind

and quick in the contracting
tunnel of the grate
appeared a world! Black
mountains, black and red--as

yet uncolored--and ash white,
an infant landscape of shimmering
ash and flame and we, in
that instant, lost,

breathless to be witnesses,
as if we stood
ourselves refreshed among
the shining fauna of that fire.