The Best Kind of Epiphany

A revelation and a new beginning

The baby was due, six years ago, on January 9th. I worried that it was a little close to the hubbub of Christmas and New Year’s, but I figured he’d be late. Aren’t most babies late? I thought about all the methods I’d read about for coaxing a late baby along. Surely they wouldn’t exist without so many late babies. Surely he’d be late.

The baby, in fact, teased us a bit with some Christmas day contractions, which set a bit of panic into our hearts. It had snowed, Seattle doesn’t have many plows, our doula was out of town. But after a grilled cheese sandwich and a nap, things died down, and we carried on preparing. We spent New Year’s Eve folding onesies and taking our three-year-old to see the zoo lights.

We’d asked my mom to fly in on January 6th, a few days early, to help us get some last minute things ready and to wait with us for the baby, who would surely be late. We hoped he would be born before her return ticket called her back to the airport.

But in the quiet of the very early morning, on January 6th, six years ago, I started to feel some funny things. It was Epiphany. It was dark. It was just me and the star.

For several hours, no one knew the baby was coming except for me and God. I lay in bed cradling my belly, swept away in silent, secret euphoria.

And I wonder if maybe that’s how the magi felt. Joy, tinged around the edges with uncertainty. They didn’t really know where they were going. They didn’t exactly have a detailed map of how to get there. They just knew it was somewhere good.

I had no idea what labor would be like, or what great mystery I would hold and kiss and call my own in a few short hours. I just knew that joy was coming.

I woke Eric up at 5:30 on Epiphany morning, when the contractions were close enough together that I was sure we needed to get moving. We had one gleeful, excited hug, and then he started getting our three-year-old packed up, making arrangements with our friends who were keeping him for us (bless them for opening their doors and their hearts at 5:30am).

I made my way, slowly, to the car, and we arrived at the hospital at 6:55am. Our Francis was born at 7:31.

Our Epiphany. Our revelation. Our new beginning.

He was born before my mom even made her connecting flight. Not late in the slightest. Early.

There are places when heaven touches earth, when the veil between them is thin. I love celebrating that every fall. But the two holiest days of my life, by far, were the two days my children were born.

Epiphanies, both of them, holding within them breadths and depths uncontainable in any cosmos.

Every year when the feast of the Epiphany rolls around and I’m busy baking chocolate birthday cake and wrapping presents, I love the invitation to linger at the manger, to take my place in the nativity. To gaze in wonder at a great and deeply good mystery. To remember the gentle nudge to carry that awe in my heart every day of the year.

The gift of Epiphany is that mystery put clothes on and joined us here on earth, and that every single one of us is welcomed in to the celebration of it. May we who also wear clothes and walk this earth remember it and treasure it, all the days of our lives.

(Six years ago with our baby, joking with the nurses that I didn’t even have time to break a sweat.)

Happy Epiphany, happy epiphanies to you, in whatever gloriously specific form they may take in your life. (And happy birthday to our Francis, who is genuinely the most joyful person I have ever met!)

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A Few Hopeful Things

—I’m excited to start teaching a short course on Russian literature and Ignatian spirituality next week! We’re working with some masterful short stories and essays, but if all goes well, hopefully someday we can do a course on the great doorstop novels of Russian literature. It’s been years since I taught at Berkeley, and it’s so good to be back in the (virtual) classroom.

—It’s usually a slow start to the new year for me, as everyone is recalibrating to their regular schedule, and indeed, we had the most wonderful unplugged week with Eric’s parents in December. I’ve yet to begin the annual stock-taking I like to do as the year turns, but one thing I’m enjoying so far is keeping a nature journal.

I do not mean to cause consternation to anyone whose city is covered in snow, but things are already blooming here in Seattle, and I’m just taking note of them. I maintain that the greatest technological feature ever created is the plant identifier in the iPhone, and I will brook no argument. I’m doing a lot of crouching down, snapping photos, and then exclaiming things like, “Skimmia japonica! Of course!” I’m sure I look ridiculous, but I do really believe it is a spiritual practice to pay attention and to learn the names of things. It’s been a gift.

—This morning I’m going back to the dermatologist for my annual check-up, so of course I’m thinking about how the last time I saw her, she was so tender and kind to me that it expanded my understanding of God. Everyone’s friend Laura Kelly Fanucci invited me to write about it for Mothering Spirit last year, so naturally I had to revisit it, to remember how that gentleness helped me understand God as Mother. What do we think, should I tell my dermatologist that she inspired a theological essay?!

Until next week, sharing in Epiphany and epiphany with you,
Cameron