The Slow Way: Epiphany and Blessing All That Can Be Blessed
There is no boundary around holiness: all of this world is worthy of God’s holy smudge. The act of blessing is simply recognizing and marking what is already true. This is the task of Epiphany.
Every Wednesday night after I lead youth group and haul the empty cooler back to my car on 20th St (the one that I carried into the city two hours earlier full of Walmart brand soda), I give my two older boys a good thirty minutes to run around with their friends. (Read: the middle schooler literally runs with his buddies throwing things and yelling. The high schooler walks calmly outside talking with his.) By then it’s 8:30 and we have a forty-five minute drive to get home. This is just the way it is, the choice I’ve made to go to a church very far from my home, and then to work at that church. And then to drive into Manhattan every Wednesday night to eat pizza and drink Walmart soda with teenagers, and talk to them about their spiritual lives. Who does this? I sometimes think to myself. The answer is always, Me. I do. And my little heart jumps because this is a good life, Jersey turnpike, Holland Tunnel, and all.
And on the ride home, after they’ve battled for the front seat, August always takes over music duties. Brooks and I would happily listen to podcasts about the genius of whales, or ship wrecks, or the secret lives of bees, but August does not share our love of history or the life of the world. He wants me in particular to understand rap. He is not satisfied with my white girl of the 90’s grasp of the Notorious BIG or early Jay Z; he wants me to understand what the genre has become: the musicality of it. We listen. We listen and listen. I am starting to notice whose voice is sandpaper and whose is butter. I’m paying attention to the strings in the background, to the ways music isn’t always what you think it’s going to be. How even my forty-something mom heart can connect to a song I would have never chosen.
And I’m trying to see my son there, in the music, because he’s asking me to see him there. He’s inviting me to his sacred space.
Months ago, I read on Shauna Niequist’s instagram something about parenting. (I can’t find it now, of course.) It was about how the most important thing we can do as a parent is choose to delight in the things that delight our children. I’ve been thinking of it as showing up in their space, leaving behind my tasks and daily requests of them, and just looking at the world—at our home—from their eyes. I am not a rap person. Never have been. But I am learning to listen for the part of my son that he wants to show me. I am learning to look for his delight.
One of the traditions of the season of Epiphany is “chalking the door.” It’s not particularly well-known, but it’s been around since medieval Europe, and was usually done on Twelfth Night (January 6) to mark the arrival of the Magi. Now, for those who practice it, it’s an act of blessing, particularly in the new year. A ritual of marking the door of the home, intentionally inviting the presence of God into the life of the people who live inside it.
I’ve been thinking about what it means to bless things. I’ve always been taken with the practice. My favorite book by Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World, is about the act of blessing. “Is it your job to confer holiness or to recognize it?” she asks. “Which things do you agree to bless and which things do you decline to bless? On what grounds do you decide which is which?” What gives us the power and the right to bless anything at all? Taylor says that the task of blessing things and one another should never just belong to certain people deemed holy enough to bless. It’s the job of everyone. And it’s one of the ways we practice the work of love in the world. “To pronounce a blessing is to participate in God’s own initiative. To pronounce a blessing is to share God’s own audacity.”
That line from her book is my favorite. Sharing in God’s own audacity. To imagine we know what can and should be blessed, to sit in the car and honor a fifteen year old’s view of the world as told through music that is sometimes so vulgar my inner-mom-corrector can hardly hold back the lectures I want to give. But (mostly) I do hold back. For the sake of the sacred story my son is telling me. For the sake of blessing.
God’s audacity. This can be blessed. The ride home on the Jersey Turnpike and the sacred music and the choice to run a youth ministry forty-five minutes from my home, and the darkness of January, and the invitation to delight in something I would never choose except for the sake of love.
There is no boundary around holiness: all of this world is worthy of God’s holy smudge. In fact, the act of blessing is simply recognizing and marking what is already true. This is the task of Epiphany for us. We show up like the wise men, carrying our gifts. What we’re invited to bring the Christ is almost always what we love. Don’t be mistaken by the gifts of gold and incense and myrrh. That was what the Magi honored. You honor other things. Like a fifteen year old playing the music that speaks to him, like this 44 year old bringing her words to the world. Blessing the people and things around us is just another way of saying that this world matters, that life is more than the edges of things; it’s the white hot center where meaning lives. Blessing is saying that everything belongs there in the sacred space, that what we have to bring is a gift worthy of the Christ child.
A Slow Practice
We’re a little late to the practice of chalking the door (most do it on January 6), but we’re going to do it anyway! So find a piece of chalk. You can do this alone or you can call over some friends or family. The tradition of chalking the door is a tradition of blessing your home. This is a reminder that spiritual practices are not just individual exercises. We need to practice our spiritual lives among other people. We need the awkward moments of reciting things together. We need the rituals of lighting candles and laying on hands. It’s culturally awkward, and sometimes culturally awkward things can shape us in profound ways.
My church Good Shepherd New York has an explanation of one way to do the ritual of chalking the door in our Epiphany guide. They suggest starting with a song, but I’m inviting us to start with a poem. The one’s about the holiness of the ordinary, and I think it’s just the thing for the ritual of blessing our own homes:
Pied Beauty
By Gerard Manley Hopkins
Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
Whoever takes the role of leader can say something like this. (I’m getting some of this language from my church’s guide.)
Reader: This is a holy place, because the presence of Christ dwells here. In the same way the three kings followed the light of the star, we too follow the light of Christ to be a place of welcome, a people of generosity, and a dwelling place for God. This home is where we’re learning to pray and search for Christ, to forgive and receive forgiveness, to offer our gifts, and to bless each other.
Pray: Spirit of God, open our hearts so that we might be people who open the doors of this home to neighbor and traveler. That we may be a source of welcome for all in need and a place where Christ is found.
{Now read aloud from the Gospel of John. As the passage is read, mark 20 ✝ C ✝ M ✝ B ✝ 24 on the door or lintel as a kind of consecration. 20 and 24 are for the year. Each number or letter is separated by a cross. The “C”, “M”, and “B” stand for the names of the three Magi – traditionally Caspar, Malchior & Balthazar. It also is for the Latin phrase: Christus Mansionem Benedicat, meaning “May Christ bless the house.” A reader may slowly read from John 1:13-14. as the inscription is written over the door.}
Reader: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.”
Pray: May we who enter this home be reminded that the grace and truth of Christ is here. May we see the ordinary sacred around us and carry all that we’ve blessed into the world.
A Note
As we closer to the release of Blessed Are The Rest of Us this April, I’ll have more and more fun things to share around here. First, I’m sharing a special promo code for 40% off on my book on BakerBookHouse.com from January 15, 2024 through the rest of the year. Just enter SLOWWAY at checkout. The first 200 people to preorder from Baker will also receive a signed copy of the book and a fun little gift. Jump over there and get your preorder in, friends! And don’t forget to use the code!
I very much resonate with the practice of blessing people, blessing ordinary moments. Recently I wake at 5am and have begun the praying the loving kindness meditation for people --especially for those that I feel hurt by, or where there is a bit of un-forgiveness. It helps stop my racing mind and I usually fall back asleep. Now! Off to find some chalk!
I love what you say about spending time enjoying your kids interests with them...I do it too! Also have a daughter who lives rap and another who loves K pop and Taylor swift!
My oldest also loves Tatoos and now I love them.cause I know she does!