From the Vicarage - January

I remember many years ago taking my young goddaughter and her brother to Halifax and watching the figure of Archimedes way up high, being lowered into his bathtub, and hearing and watching the water gushing out. “Eureka!” That is, of course, both the name of the Museum we were visiting and the moment being dramatically re-enacted by the Archimedes installation. That simple ‘bathtub moment’ led the ancient Greek mathematician and scientist to immediately grasp a new understanding of the relationship between the rise of the water and the volume of the part of his body -submerged in it – ‘Eureka’!

The word Eureka does not appear in any church liturgies that I know of, but we shall spend the weeks of January reflecting upon the term Epiphany, which is not too far removed.

“Eureka” (meaning ‘I’ve found it’), communicates a dramatic moment of discovery.

“Epiphany” (meaning manifestation or revelation) is often used in similar contexts, but in fact the biblical Epiphany story tells us of the long and arduous seeking of those first three wise (or not so wise) Kings of the Orient. They traversed desert and mountain, city and town seeking for “the King who has been born”.

Sometimes our discoveries are only arrived at, after long, arduous, even painful, journeys.

There is a Jewish tale which I have always found to be poignant. A Rabbi asked his students, “How do we know when the night has ended, and the day begun?” 

The students came back eagerly, with their replies: – 

“When I look out and I can distinguish between my field and the field of my neighbour –

 that’s when the night has ended and day has begun.”

“When I look from the fields and can distinguish my house from my neighbour’s,

 that’s when the night has ended and day has begun.”

“When I can make out the animals in the yard – and tell a cow from a horse – 

that’s when the night has ended, and day has begun.”

“No”, replied the Rabbi, “You don’t understand! You only know how to divide! You divide your house from the house of your neighbour, your field from your neighbour’s, one animal from another. Is that all that we can do – divide, separate, split the world into pieces? Isn’t the world broken enough - split into enough fragments?”

“Then, tell us, how do we know?”, asked his students. 

With a gentle voice the Rabbi spoke again,

“When you look into the face of the person who is beside you 

and you can see that that person is your brother or your sister… 

then, finally, the night has ended, and the day has begun.”

May this New Year, and Season of Epiphany, bring to our world, nation and neighbourhoods

a fresh dawning and discovery of unity and community, 

of relationship and friendship one with another – gifts as precious as gold, frankincense and myrrh! 

New Year Blessings to You All  

Carolyn  The Reverend Carolyn A James