Merry Christmas and Happy Almost New Year.

2025, at least in my experience, was a year when the future seemed more open, more uncertain, and maybe in some ways more frightening than at any point in recent memory.

And so I thought I would read a poem for the season that spoke directly to the experience

of transformation, anxiety in its shadow, and hopefully revelation as well. So this is The Journey of the

Magi by T.S. Elliott.

A cold coming we had of it.

Just the worst time of the year for a journey, and such a long journey.

The ways 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 Sherbert. Then the camelmen cursing and grumbling and running away,

and wanting their liquor and women,

and the night fires going out, and the lack of shelters,

and the city's hostile and the towns unfriendly,

and the village is 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 snowline, smelling of vegetation,

with a running stream and a watermill 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.

...