T.S. Tuesday: Journey of the Magi Part 3
Today is Part 3 of the Journey of the Magi series. Check out my thoughts on the first two stanzas in Part 1 and Part 2. Here is the third and final stanza of T.S. Eliot's "The Journey of the Magi."
“All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.”
At this part in the poem, the Magi have arrived. They have reached their destination. They have seen the Christ child. 
And are their thoughts ecstasy and enlightenment? No. Instead they say something quite peculiar. That this birth they have witnessed feels the same as death.
“I have seen birth and death, but had thought they were different.”
Besides loving the language, the poetry. I love the truth in this statement. Our faith is built on the idea of dying to self so that we may have new life in Christ. A birth and death and resurrection in one.
I’ve never imagined the wise men feeling let down. Feeling alien. Feeling out of place.
They have found what they were looking for, the destination they were seeking, but instead of bringing them glory and comfort and peace, they are left “no longer at ease” with their old way of life, with their old homes and old gods.
I’m reminded of a quote by C.S. Lewis that says, “All joy emphasises our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings."
The Magi (and T.S. Eliot himself I assume) have experienced a joy so grand and so real and so marvelous that the “old dispensation,” the old beliefs, the status quo, cannot hold the things they’ve learned. They are marked by the wanting of a new Kingdom. A longing for justice. The longing for love. They have seen in part and they want to see in full.
The part I think is beautiful, and what I think C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot were getting at, is that the presence of their longings points to the presence God. Both the image of a God at work within them and a God at work in the universe—stirring hope. Pointing to the fulfillment that is to come.
T.S. Tuesday: Journey of the Magi: Part 2
Today’s T.S. Tuesday is Part 2—after Part 1--of a three part series on Eliot’s poem, The Journey of the Magi.
My attempted nuggets of wisdom will come from the second stanza, which describes the three Magi’s journey to see the newborn Messiah of the Jews:
I’m struck by the line “But there was no information, and so we continued.” Not “and yet” or “but” we continued. No, “and so.” There was no information, AND SO we continued.
That is not my usual response. On all my metaphorical camel clad pilgrimages, the darkness and the silence and the lack of clues and INFORMATION is a sign of failure, of defeat. A signal to turn back. To search harder. To turn the running streams and water-mills and old white horses into a divine code that gestures to my success or my defeat.
I don’t often think to just keep going. To walk anyway. To trust anyway. To trust the Magnificent Star that first drew me out of my comfortable quarters so many distant miles back.
And so the Magi continue. And guess what, they arrive--“not a moment too soon.”
They arrive. We will arrive. I will arrive.
The darkness will end. The search for information will be satisfied with relationship, with a meeting of the Messiah.
I ask today for the courage to walk anyway. To trust anyway. To not be discouraged by the lack of information, but to rejoice in the hope of Who I will find.
And so I continue.
T.S. Tuesday: Journey of the Magi Pt. 1
It’s finally happening. I’ve finally branched out from the Four Quartets. Today’s evocative Eliot comes from his poem “The Journey of the Magi.”
I ask your forgiveness in advance because I’m going to mix some Eliot with some Salinger. My brain has been fully marinating in the delightful details and philosophical forays of all that is Franny and Zooey and, despite my efforts at purging, I just can’t seem to let him go. Plus, I think it’s pertinent, at least tangentially.
I’ll start by sharing the first of three stanzas of Eliot’s poem “The Journey of the Magi.”
(This will be a three-part post, FYI. If you’re the type who likes to read ahead, you can view the poem in its entirety here).
"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The was deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.”
As the title suggests, this poem is about the journey of the Magi, the three wise men, to see the Christ child. Magi sounds far off and mystical. Like there has to be robes and camels and ancient wisdom involved in seeing this newborn Messiah.
But that’s not true.
We are all pilgrims. We all have the makings of a wise man or woman.
As a fellow pilgrim and aspiring wise woman, I’ve been thinking a lot about this journey. And what the final destination will be.
What’s the point? Why put up with the hostile towns and dirty villages? Why be called a fool?
What is it about seeing this Christ child that makes the arduous road worthwhile?
What is it that this SEEING will do?
The answer I have come to currently is the answer given by Zooey, in Salinger’s Franny and Zooey.
Which, ironically doesn’t require a physical journey at all, but a journey of perspective. A paradigm shift.
As Zooey tells his nervous-and-religious-breakdown-ridden sister, Franny, there is something about Jesus, this Messiah that the Magi, sleeping in snatches and traveling across deserts ventured to see, that can’t be found in any one else:
“Jesus knew — knew — that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look? You have to be a son of God to know that kind of stuff.”
“I can't see why anybody — unless he was a child, or an angel, or a lucky simpleton like the pilgrim — would even want to say a prayer to a Jesus who was the least bit different from the way he looks and sounds in the New Testament. My God! He's only the most intelligent man in the Bible, that's all! Who isn't he head and shoulders over? Who? Both Testaments are full of pundits, prophets, disciples, favorite sons, Solomons, Isaiahs, Davids, Pauls — but, my God, who besides Jesus really knew which end was up? Nobody. Not Moses. Don't tell me Moses. He was a nice man, and he kept in beautiful touch with his God, and all that — but that's exactly the point. He had to keep in touch. Jesus realized there is no separation from God.”
God is in EVERYTHING. Including us.
This is the seeing and seeking that I wish to attain. To see the I AM in me, in my coworkers, in my friends, in my enemies. This is the pilgrimage that enthralls and propels me.