The Slow Way: Good News! January is not the time to change your life.

Epiphany actually asks very little of us except what winter asks: To sustain ourselves, to wait well, to look for the light in these dark days, to open ourselves o the possibility that God is here.

for the frantic strivers, serial doers, and weary achievers

For the second year in a row, I will not participate in the January sticker contest that my exercise studio holds every January. Whoever completes the most classes wins! It’s not because I don’t believe in working out in January. I actually always have dreams of overcoming this season’s brutal cold with all the inner warmth that comes from cardio. I will not win because respiratory sickness arrives in my body and home like clockwork every early January, just as the holiday season comes to a close.

This week: One kid has pneumonia. My antibiotics are still fighting a monster of a sinus infection. And Ace’s little body is still working off the virus that landed me and his brother with antibiotics. Once again, I’ve been reminded that, despite our culture’s insistence that this is the month to attempt all our life-changing resolutions, I have nothing to prove and no one to prove it to this January. When the weather is frigid and the nights are long, when our bodies are struggling and those we love need our care, what matters is the good stuff—love, joy, rest, not how well we can perform during the hardest month of the year.

And listen, I’m convinced that no matter where you find yourself in the Northern hemisphere, January is the hardest month of the year. It is the coldest, the sickest, the most dangerous (as my dear ones in Los Angeles know right now), and the month with the least to celebrate: Short days, no playful holidays. The cold outside our house has even depressed Richmond the Dog, who does not want to go on a walk, thank you very much.

Epiphany arrives exactly at this moment, insisting not that we get outside and meet our physical improvement goals, or finally rightly organize our lives. This particular season of the Christian calendar actually asks very little of us except what winter asks: To sustain ourselves, to wait well, to look for the light in these dark days, to open ourselves to the possibility that God is here in the suffering.

Epiphany organizes itself around three main stories of scripture: The visit from the Magi, the baptism of Jesus, and Jesus’s first miracle turning water into wine. Each of these moments are epiphanies in of themselves, revelations of who Jesus is and the kind of life we who follow him are invited to inhabit.

The magi, or “the three kings” arrive with gifts in tow, following “yonder star” (let’s bring the word yonder back, okay?). The light in the sky reveals the light of the world. And Jesus is revealed as an unlikely revelation of the Divine. We are left to wonder, along with the wise men, what this might mean.

Jesus is baptized and experiences the power of connection with God and the assurance that he belongs, that he is the son of the Divine. This is a revelation for him, for John the Baptist who is present for this transformative moment, and for us as we encounter the story. Whatever happens to Jesus in that moment of discovery results in him heading to the wilderness to prepare spiritually for his ministry, gathering a few disciples, journeying north to Galilee and arriving in Cana just in time for a wedding.

The wedding is the third epiphany of the season, when Jesus responds to the party troubles of his family friends with his first (and some might say, his most unique) miracle, packed full of symbolism. He takes the jugs used for purification washing and rearranges their particles into wine. Good wine. How does he do this? How does his mother know he can do this? How does he decide this is the moment to unleash his wild holy power? No answers for you here. But I do wonder about this one, and why it’s the miracle our ancestors of faith choose to emphasize in this particular season of wonder and revelation. What is our epiphany here—Jesus’s power? His humor? His willingness to delight in the world? His love of gathering and friendship? His tendency to rearrange our attempts at holiness and reveal a new way to live? I tend to think it’s all of the above.

Also, I’m with our Christian ancestors in believing that these three epiphanies have much to teach us about how to live in the most difficult season of the year. This is the season to look for joy, to cling to our people, to find humor and wonder in the midst of our fear and sorrow.

Over the next three weeks, I want to explore these stories more deeply. And I want to explore what is underneath our “new year new you” tendencies that usually crash and burn. What if we, like Katherine May explores in Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, become intentional about using this season a way to slow it all down, not to practice laziness, but to practice gentleness, smallness, and the spiritual restoration that can come when we trust that God, in our limitations, is making us whole?

A Slow Practice

This week I put together some breath prayers for a friend who lives in the path of the fires in Los Angeles, something she can pray in moments of anxiety. It seems fitting that I offer them for all of us, whether we’re among those facing loss and trauma in LA, praying for those in literal or metaphorical fires, or simply finding ourselves moving through January with a limp.

This is the season for light and revelation. And also, it’s just so hard. Will you join me in praying this week?

Breathe in: You do not sleep

Breathe out: You have not left us

Breathe in: Here I am

Breathe out: I am looking for you

Breathe in: We are here

Breathe out: God come close to us

From Isaiah 43:2

Breathe in: When I pass through the waters

Breathe out: You will be with me

Breathe in: When I pass through the rivers

Breathe out: They will not sweep over me

Breathe in: When I walk through the fire

Breathe out: I will not be burned

From Psalm 20:11

Breathe in: Trouble is near

Breathe out: Be not far from me

From Psalm 121:1

Breathe in: I lift up my eyes to the hills

Breathe out: My help comes from the Lord

From 1 Kings 19:11-13

Breathe in: I looked for you

Breathe out: You were not in the wind

Breathe in: I looked for you

Breathe out: You were not in the fire

Breathe in: Lord come gently

Breathe out: Save us from our sorrows

One More Thing:

Thanks for giving me a break over the past few weeks. I’ve soaked it up, and I’m excited to be back. As a reminder, I try to get to get these letters out on Fridays, and when I don’t, you can usually find them here on Saturdays. Happy new year, friends!