Journey

T.S Eliot says he wrote Journey of the Magi;   ‘….  one Sunday morning before lunch with the assistance of half a bottle of Booth’s gin.’

And here I am this Sunday morning with a mug of coffee one hundred years later. I often struggle to understand Eliot’s poems but find phrases of their ‘music’ never leave me. This poem is also significant as our daughter performs a version of Journey of the Magi on a tour every December with Springs Dance Company.   

As it’s about a journey and about a birth and a death it resonates with myself and Andy. I’m using phrases from the poem as headings.

‘A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:’

We had the news that Andy’s mum was very close to the end and made a dash to Kathmandu airport in the middle of the night. Sadly, by the time we’d reached Dubai airport she had gone. I didn’t care what the Dubai culture thought of me hugging Andy tightly in that public space. We wish we could have been back in time to say ‘goodbye.’

The very dead of winter…

The icy weather seemed fitting – the harshness of Margaret’s ending alongside the beauty of her life.

There were times we regretted the summer palaces on slopes…

We will always miss something of Nepali Christmases – The eastern dusty paths, the poinsettias – the passionate purity of worship without the tinsel-plastic-muzak in the shops. And indeed the simpler more down to earth funeral arrangements.

And the night-fire going out and the lack of shelters…and charging high prices….

And yet how much closer UK is these days to the situation when Jesus was born.

And three trees on the low sky…

These hint gently at something profound for me about three crosses, love and reconciliation, death and new life.

Were we led all this way for

Birth or death? There was a birth, certainly..

…I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different: This birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

Maybe like us this year, there is a dissonance for you about the phrase; ‘Happy Christmas.’

We nevertheless wish you celebration of life and a lamp to guide your way as we share this picture of Andy’s parents two Christmases ago.