Epiphanies and Uncertainties

Phoenix is always a strange place to be around this time of year. Some trees are dropping their leaves. Perhaps it finally grew cold enough at the end of December to inspire them to shed the glory of last year. Still, with this weather it is nearly always a good day in winter to go to the park. Why, I just recently enjoyed a hot afternoon hike with my children beneath the January sun!

Did you know the Christmas season ended for us Catholics yesterday with the The Baptism of Our Lord? I was going to get a few more carols strummed on my guitar last evening and ended up looking at photo albums instead. The pictures of our little children playing in this house and yard that we no longer own made me wistful. Our family is experiencing a time of transition and uncertainty.

I have so many emotions lately! That is always true with me, I'm afraid, though I am trying harder not to be led by my feelings and not to let them spill forth from my mouth - that is my perpetual resolution for self-improvement, and I don't need a fresh year to remind me of it.

Aside from emotions I had many small revelations and minor disappointments this past Christmas season. This last Sunday was the feast of the Epiphany commemorating the visit of the Three Wise Men and the revelation of the Messiah to the Gentiles. Epiphany is a great feast and an important one to me. I love the story of the wise men. I am grateful to be a Gentile who has seen the light. But this last feast day found me not altogether happy with every change that has occurred in our family life these past months nor entirely without fear when I try to plan for our future. Where will our own star lead us?

On a more frivolous note, because I am currently employed in retail and often work weekends, I was unable to have friends over or prepare all the usual yeast breads, cakes, and gingerbread camel cookies that I typically do, and I may have even cried about it - mostly because I just really wanted some homemade bread to stuff in my face while spending time with people I love!

On the way home from work that evening I found Rosca de Reyes at Walmart to serve my family for the special occasion, and I played We Three Kings and O Holy Night on my guitar at the dinner table. It was still a celebration, just not the one I hoped to have. Yet, my oldest son Berto made sugar camel cookies all by himself for the family, for me. He also, with Papa's help, made the cookies for Santa this year, and can you imagine how proud these efforts made me? They were very good cookies, too.

Beyond the revelation that my son may enjoy baking like me, I had other important epiphanies this past December.

While preparing one morning to read at church for the fourth Sunday of Advent, I read the Gospel passage where Gabriel visits Zechariah and greets him thus:

Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall name him John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord.

Zechariah later responds:

How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.

Then Gabriel replies:

I am Gabriel, who stand before God. I was sent to speak to you and to announce this good news. But now you will be speechless and unable to talk until the day these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled at their proper time.

Never before had I been so fascinated with this passage! Often have I overlooked it in favor of that greater announcement that Gabriel makes to a young woman named Mary, but several things struck me quite powerfully this time. Why, oh why, did Zechariah question the answer to his prayer, no doubt a prayer that he made fervently and doggedly for years in hope of God's reply? Could it be that by the time Gabriel visited Zechariah, Zechariah had long since given up on this prayer, on uttering his pleas, and resigned himself to God's silence or a definitive "no" from the Most High? Why else argue with an angel, God's messenger? For Gabriel specifically said, "your prayer has been heard"?

I don't know the answer, but I find the whole thing very, very interesting, and as someone who has sometimes felt like God's 11th hour baby - haven't we all? - when it comes to prayer life, it bolsters my faith - and also encourages me not to argue with God's messengers when they come at their proper time.

The other small revelation I had came from a conversation I had with my friend Dana. We were speaking about the suffering we see in the world, and she brought up that old saying, "God doesn't give you more than you can handle". Dana added something like this: "But he gives you right up to that limit." 

I told her I felt the saying was trite and added, " Sometimes I see people, and I think they have more than they can handle."

Later in the car - again on the way to or from work - I was thinking about my own response and feeling a little appalled by my own cynicism. My speech was not hopeful or encouraging, probably because my family was having a rough few days - mostly my fault, I must say. In the car it occurred to me that, yes, perhaps that old saying did need a bit of editing but it was not to be discarded like stale dessert, for if one just adds a few more words, I think it makes sense to me:

God doesn't give you more than you can handle [with His grace].

Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me, but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me.  2 Corinthians 12:8-9

With A Little Help From Our Friends

My dad wrote me a message on Facebook telling me to post something on my blog. I know he meant it, too, because he called me Hillary instead of Hoodoo.

Sorry I've taken a hiatus. Truthfully, I haven't been on email, Facebook or my blog hardly at all in the past few weeks, and it's been great. Really great - and very easy, because I don't have a smartphone. Instead, I have been cleaning and organizing my home, reading a book and the newspaper, and playing several mini-pool, Uno, and Doodle Dice tournaments with my kids, particularly my youngest boy, my Dan Sam. It has truly been peaceful and enjoyable. I have always been a lover of home, a bonafide homebody, and to me that means staying out of the virtual world, too.

But it's time to come back, so here you go, Dad.

Picture by Holly

Going on a nearly six-mile-loop hike in the Superstition Mountains with close friends is one of the most amazing things I have ever done to begin the Christmas season. May it become a tradition!

(Though I had several pics to share with you, I had to steal the above from my friend's Facebook, because I lost our camera. No surprise there, but it kept me from posting about our adventure for a while.)

Holly and Chip, our best hiking buddies, invited us on the excursion. The way to the trail was a long way off the highway, and as our car rocked and heaved over the rutted, winding, narrow dirt road, I gaily said to my husband, "Think of all the adventures you'd never have if it were up to you!"

Our friends had said they didn't think there was any off-roading involved, nothing like that terrible drive to the creek that one time. When we finally reached the trailhead, they got out of their car laughing, saying Matthew would never, ever come on a hike with them again after another awful drive. But I think it's a bit like labor. Once you get to the beautiful destination, you quickly forget the travails that came before.

I stand before Weaver's Needle. Pic by Holly

Matthew, athletic though he is, is not a born hiker, but when we were in those mountains with our kids and Yorkie and with Holly and Chip's family, including their Pug, he was glad to be there; that is always true. As we gained elevation, passing by red rocks, wild trees, a tiny stream, sporadic saguaros and towering, spindly stalks sprung from American aloe plants, we did all wonder now and again when we might reach our destination, a landmark called Weaver's Needle. Since none of us could fly as the bird goes, we had to be content to wend along Peralta Trail until we rounded a rock behemoth and suddenly spied our goal. There we had lunch by some huge boulders, from which vantage point we could see the Needle against the bright, open Arizona sky. A lone pine tree stood on the heights to its right, our Christmas tree for a Christmas hike.

Later we scrambled up the boulders in whose shadows we had shivered and munched, inching through a miniature slot canyon and then scaling rocks for a view. The rocks were so strangely cold to the touch, they hurt our hands if we lingered for more than a moment against their surface.

After lunch and some more exploring with friends and dogs, it was time to tread back down, but the return is always easier and shorter when the longed-for panorama has been viewed. At the end of our hike, we enjoyed some chocolate-dipped peppermint shortbread, and I hoped with all my heart then and there that we would eat similar Christmas victuals with our friends at the foot of another beautiful Arizona mountain Christmas Eve 2015.

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I can hardly believe our luck, but New Year's found us again in the company of dear friends, sledding down some hills near Prescott.

That had not been our plan. Our plans were to clean and paint our house on the first day of the new year, prepping our home for our annual Three Kings' Day party. Thankfully, Alex and Dana rescued us from a busy but boring day by inviting our family to go sledding with theirs.

Matthew said no at first...until I got to him.

The kids really wanted to go sledding in Flagstaff, and I had told them that they should all come together and ask Papa for that Christmas gift. There had been no snow at the time of the kids' request, not even in Flagstaff, but 2014 had cried its goodbyes on a frigid wind, dumping snow and rain on the new year as it departed. This invitation was the perfect way to fulfill our kids' wish. It would be even easier to grant since their Grandpa had bought them sturdy inner tubes years before, and a friend had left us her long sled when her family moved.

And so on the first day of a fresh year, I stood in my pajamas, wet from scrubbing showers, and pleaded with my man to consider an abrupt change of plans that would give our kids their gift and lasting memories of this New Year's; after all, it would be Daniel's and Gabriella's first time sledding. He stared back at me in disbelief. This woman with the limp hair, the one who always went insane before parties while trying to get the house and food prepared, was asking him to abandon the practical work she had asked him to do in order to blow a whole day on fun, and fun that would require a long drive north, too. I saw irritation etched on those handsome features, but I also saw a hint of understanding. I hastily forsook my cleaners and sponges and threw myself into the hall closet, dragging out every forgotten mitten, thermal cap, glove and heavy winter coat.

And that was how, after some near heart attacks while trying to park in a small area with a hundred other cars off a country road, we ended up in the snow watching our kids play with their buddies, yelling advice at them to keep their bottoms up in the inner tubes to avoid the rocks and then applauding and laughing with each successful run or not-too-painful turnout into the snow. The day wouldn't have been complete if the adults had not had their turn. I'm afraid we did some damage to the sleds, but we zipped and spun and yelped and laughed with the most childlike child there.

When at last our Phoenix toes and fingers complained of alarming numbness, we drove into town to eat a hearty celebratory meal at Prescott Brewery. On our walk back to the car in the nasty chill, prancing like ponies at stoplights to keep warm, we saw the territorial Courthouse and the many trees on its square ablaze with thousands of colorful lights.

2015 began in that unexpected, joyous way.

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Three Kings' Day, aka Epiphany, being my favorite feast - a celebration of the revelation of the promise of Christ to the Gentiles - we threw a party. I lined up my Three Kings nutcrackers and nativities on our table, and around them I placed dried fruit, pita with hummus and yeast breads that I make once a year: Apple-Cheddar Vanocka with saffron threads and a Cardamom Christmas wreath. I also piled the tablecloth with pound cake, gingerbread camels, raspberry coffee cake and cinnamon scones as it was - no surprise to those who know my love of baking - a dessert party. I love pampering people with food on special occasions; it has something to do with growing up in the South and with my own Mama's generous kitchen offerings.

For Catholics the Christmas season lasts for a few weeks beginning with Christmas Eve, so the house was still decorated in all our Christmas finery, including several handmade decorations from the children, when many of our dear friends came for the celebration on January 4th.

I had warned everyone we would sing carols, and so after time to relish the goodies that were hauled in on platters by every arriving family, I pulled out my burgundy guitar and gathered the kids around - more specifically, the girls, because the boys were outside wrestling each other in football and making Taz, our Yorkie, jump for his Santa toys and had zero desire to sing. The carol book was propped upon my lap, but I lost some chords and pitched some notes. Yet, my friends did not abandon this amateur musician as they sat on the couch or floor by their daughters. We gloried through Angels We Have Heard on High, belted out Feliz Navidad and ha-had our way through Jingle Bells. Holly helped me with We Three Kings, and we all merrily sang Joy to the World in the tempo my dad always preferred. Then my man Matthew, good man that he is, marched all those rowdy boys inside. I assigned one day each from The Twelve Days of Christmas to groups of kids crowded about our small living room, and Geraldine, Holly and Dana all helped by taking days themselves. We got mixed up several times, and I twanged my strings and butchered some chords again in my exuberance, but we were united in our silliness. The adults on the outside of the circle laughed as we counted off our list of oh-so-useful gifts from our true love. After the finale I rewarded the kids for their lively participation with English-style crackers, a Three Kings' party tradition.

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Later that week as I strummed my guitar, reminisced and dreamed of next Epiphany, it occurred to me yet again just how beautifully, like long strands of bright bulbs on an evergreen tree, our whole Christmas season had been illuminated by the myriad gifts of friendship. We did indeed have a very Merry Christmas with (much more than) a little help from our friends.

Figs and Dates

I feel like a little child writing this, and that's probably a good thing.

I discovered something this past Christmas; specifically I found it on Epiphany, aka Three Kings' Day. Actually, my husband found it for me. I wanted to spread my table with good and exotic breads and fruits to represent the region the Wise Men likely came from, so I asked my husband to please go to the store and find for me some apricots, dates and figs.

He brought them home, dried fruit, and teased me about how expensive they were - particularly the small bags of organic, unsweetened dates and figs. I was delighted as I placed them in little bowls before the wooden carving of the Wise Men on my dining room table, three little bowls for each of the Three Kings. Of course, I had to try the dates and figs first myself. The dates were good, delicately flavored, but the figs! Shesh, that was quite a strong flavor and texture, very chewy and very spicy. A little bite went a long way, I promise you.

When our dear friends left after the party, I had almost two full bags of dates and figs left, and my husband admonished, "You better eat them or take the unopened bags back to the store!"

"I will; I will."

The dates were not a problem, but the figs...I wasn't so sure I could grow accustomed to them. Yet, I didn't want to return them. I was sure they were good for me, so I began cutting those dried bell-shaped fruits into manageable pieces, twisting off the hard nub at the top, and then eating them slowly, relishing the natural spicy kick in the little seeds.

A strange thing happened. The more I ate the more I began to think about Jesus. Each time I bit into a fig, I felt connected to him (like all those times I tell my youngest children to eat their fish, because it's good for their brains, and Jesus ate tons of it while hanging out with his fishermen disciples). Did he like figs particularly? I don't know, but when he came to a fig tree one day, very hungry, and found leaves but no fruit, he cursed it. When his disciples discovered that it had actually withered to its roots the following day, they were astonished, and Jesus told them, "Have faith in God." (Mark 11:12-14, 20-23)

He also used figs to help illustrate a point about people professing themselves to be what they are not: "By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit." (Matthew 7:15-20)

There is also the parable about the need for repentance and the great gift of a second, third, fourth chance, the gift of mercy and intercession, in his story of the fruitless fig tree. (Luke 13:6-9)

So, you see, I began to have this warm glow every time I ate this strange, dried, chewy fruit, and I felt a little childish but happy when I confessed to my husband, "Every time I have a fig, I feel connected to Jesus. I know that's funny."

But my husband must have understood what I meant, because when my sweet daughter Ana and I had eaten our very last fig, he came home from the store one day with another bag as if to say, Hey, whatever works, works.

Whatever reminds you of the love of Christ is a good thing.


This was first published on my faith blog, Seeking the Prince of Peace, in February 2014. I am presently working on two new, very different posts and hope to present them to you, my readers, soon. Happy 2015 to each and every one of you!