The Epiphany

Some thoughts on 'A cold coming we had of it' by T S Eliot

'Like so much in the Christmas narrative, the arrival of the wise men has been romanticized in our telling of the story. Our versions tend to focus on their arrival at the manger, their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh, their brave decision to rebel against Herod (Matthew 2:1-12). We see them as a sign that even earthly rulers are humbled before the throne of the newborn king.

But Eliot suggests a far different reading of the Magi. There is little triumph, little nobility in his narrative. Instead, it is grim, earthy, crude. There is doubt. There is complaining. There is despair.

When Eliot wrote this poem, not only was he a fairly new Christian, he was also in the throes of a difficult, disintegrating marriage. Coming to the faith at mid-life, Eliot’s conversion was not a simple matter of belief out of unbelief, but of a long, slow, clearly painful process of letting go of one life and clinging desperately to another. Like the Magi, the new convert travels out of one country into a sometimes dark, dank, unfamiliar place where the natives are not always kind, the sleep often restless, the mission undefined. Is it a birth or a death? “I had seen birth and death,” he writes, “But had thought they were different; this Birth was hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.”

Through Eliot’s words, we are invited into a different telling of the Christmas story, one in which the reframing of the world, the mixing of kingdoms ushered in by the Incarnation, brings as much pain and struggle as it brings joy and peace. This is not a simple story of God entering the world and all being well. We know there is great tragedy to come in this story, that it won’t always make sense. We know that our stories, too, are laced with sorrow and loss and the constant need to choose faith and hope over despair and confusion. As we wander through mountains and deserts and what can often be vast wastelands of doubt, we face that “hard and bitter agony” of leaving behind our old kingdoms and making our way into new ones. And yet, in the midst of this tension, we, like the Magi, find ourselves glad of another death as we slowly let go of the darkness and cling to the light.' (from an article by Carla Barnhill of the Christian History Insitute)

The Journey of the Magi
by T S Eliot

 

"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 gong 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.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
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.

Journey of the Magi

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