When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among others,
To make music in the heart.

Howard Thurman

Epiphany, for me, has always been marked by these words of Howard Thurman.  I know the Day is long gone, but I’m still stuck there.  Some of you will know it was January 6.  So maybe we’re all partly stuck in that time.  We watch and re-watch the videos of violence and sedition in our nation’s Capitol Building to find clues for what the work of Christmas will be this orbit around the sun.  It was a Herodian uprising, incited with more hate speech from T**** and his white supremacist people-haters in what many have called the “Temple of Our Democracy.”  A Catholic colleague, on a recent zoom call, lamented that Epiphany would now be forever stained with this memory.  In truth, it brings sacred light to bear on both the ancient narrative and ours, in much the same way the school murders in Parkland, Florida on Ash Wednesday 2019, illumined our calling to live lives of ashes and dust to keep our children safe.  

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Epiphany is defined as a “sudden and striking realization.”  It marks the arrival of the Magi to the manger.  They followed the star for months, perhaps thinking they would pay homage to the new Sovereign with gold and smelly perfumes and go home.  Their sudden and striking realization is that true light is born in darkness on the margins, amid poverty, racism and insurrection where wealth-mongers and addicts of power go to great lengths to turn humanity against itself, creating the false narrative that only the pre-destined and privileged are entitled to live under a star.   The Magi, awakened to the danger, chose a better way home.  So must we.

Epiphany is also the season between 1/6 and Ash Wednesday, but is it possible all of 2020 was our Epiphany, infused with sudden and striking realizations? Our own family narrative was very much woven with our nation’s story.  At Epiphany 2020 T**** was being impeached for abuse of power and we first heard of COVID-19.  In February, as POTUS did his best to hide the truth, Ahmaud was murdered in Georgia, his death ruled a lynching in a long history of lynchings there.  In March, as we decided to seek another home, our communities were locking down and Breonna was killed by police.  In May, as we sold our real estate for too much money, George Floyd was gasping, “I can’t breathe!”  The streets were alive with mostly peaceful protest, the best of young and old making “good trouble,” in the John Lewis tradition.  

As we loaded the U-haul, in another hottest year, POTUS was still touting climate hoax.  We caravanned up the Santiam River thru forest villages with all our stuff. We passed Detroit where we used to stop at the Cedars for breakfast to charge the EV.  Little did we know then, in a few weeks, wildfires would vaporize much of it, with a million acres and 4,000 homes statewide.  The sun would go dark for 10 days, as we huddled, choking on air, but safe in our Bend rental, waiting for a crude burnt Passover.  As we moved from 97128 to 97702, we learned again that where one lives matters. Neighbors in zip codes of color die more, lose their homes to hurricanes and wildfire more.  They’re more compromised by poverty, lack of food, health care and climate catastrophe.  COVID deaths for Black people are 3.6 times that of whites.  In New Mexico, 58% of the dead are Navajo and Pueblo people—9% of the population.

In Christmastime, as we signed a contract to have another net zero house built, we worshipped a homeless Nativity family, most probably of African American, Tribal and Latinx parentage.  We put N-95s on all of them.  With 300,000 dead, it just seemed right.  We learned once more we have no idea what no room at the inn really means.  But we pledged again to ally ourselves with those who do.   Then we celebrated the New Year with guarded hope, cheered the flipping of Georgia and the chance at a world-changing, transformative Congress…then the hateful murderous shit hit the fan and we had Epiphany again covered in holy crap.

One of the great gifts of the year is our whole Oregon family and proximity with our Bend family and grandson Jackson.  As we were creating this intrepid history of 2020 USA, Jackson was making his own legend, evolving from 1-1/2 to 2-1/2.  In the first half of his third year he is saying “NO!” a lot more, demanding his autonomy even as he craves his interdependence.  Not so different from America, right?  One of the first big words Jackson spoke was “excavator.”  The big noisy machines are doing construction all over the neighborhood.  He can watch for hours, and his parents love to take him.  Just a few days ago, he drew the picture at the top of this blog, saying, “It’s an excavator!”  Maybe for us, 2021 will be the Year of the Excavator.  For all of us.  I mean, in our small Bend moment, construction of our next Net Zero home will begin in the spring.  An excavator will clear space for the new foundation and the witness of a visible home in our little neighborhood, built better with a local conscience.  The more important excavation, though, goes way beyond our tiny footprint. 

The Year of Excavation is not only the literal groundbreaking, creating new jobs to help our nation and the world “build back better.  It will be a continuance of the moral excavation of 2020, pealing away layers of denial, digging out turfs of exclusion that hide the roots of our America in white supremacy and racism, exploitation of the culturally vulnerable and elevation of corporate greed to economic, political and spiritual worship.  This year we will continue to expose the false narrative that access to health care, a living wage, educational opportunity and affordable emissions-free housing in a safe community are entitlements for a few, when we know they are human rights for all.   We will continue to dispute the myth that we can live together this way and not condemn our Holy Planet to cold-blooded execution. 

We love how our family’s two-and-a-half-year-old often plays with his cheek to the ground.  He seems to be curious about how the excavator works and what makes the “wheels on the bus go ‘round and ‘round.”  We believe his child-play will lead us.  We will keep our cheeks to the Ground of Our Being and our ears. We will get to the bottom of things.  This is our Epiphany.  This is our better way home.  This is the work of Christmas.

Since Inauguration, even with the rude violation of sacred national space, I am learning to hope again.  The first woman of color to be Vice President is Vice President.  Grandson Jackson can say Joe Biden is our President! He can say Kamala Harris. On President Biden’s first Sunday in Office he went to Mass with his granddaughters, then they all went to a Jewish Delicatessen and bought bagels for his White House staff.  Why does this simple act bring me to tears?  Where did we find this human, this politician with a soul?  No work is more pressing than COVID recovery, racial equity and Climate Emergency.  I have hope because the Epiphany of 2020 gave us the rising persistence of Black Lives Matter and actual peaceful protest in the streets.  Because of those and what we are learning from the supremacist handing of the pandemic, our work on Climate Emergency will forever be fused with our work on public health and racial and economic equity.

It means (oh duh) that as we create millions of new jobs in a clean energy economy, preference must be given to communities of color, tribal and low-income peoples, otherwise we continue the old narrative.  As we re-commit ourselves to building affordable housing, new codes must require that these be low or zero emission buildings.  As we expand EV drivership and move toward 100% emission-free transport, we must electrify in ways that not only favor those who can afford a Chevy Bolt as we can, but that we focus on access to EV technologies that marginalized communities actually use, like mass transit.  As we expand charging infrastructures, we must give preference to electrifying EVs like school buses.  School buses are used most by low-income, children of color and tribal students who live in communities where asthma is killing our kids with diesel fumes from buses and refineries.

This morning, I listened to Joe Biden as he rolled out and signed his first comprehensive Executive Order on Climate at the end of his first week in office.  It is not enough.  It is just a first step.  But it is a fantastic first step.  It identifies climate chaos as a crisis and a matter of national and international security.  That all government vehicles will soon be EVs, that we will install 500,000 more EV chargers, that our electric grid will be carbon free by 2035 are all essential along with the creation of the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy.  And all through the Order, the demand for equity is visible: 1.5 M energy efficient affordable homes built, weatherization of 1 M homes soon, that 40% of federal expenditures must benefit low-income, tribal and communities of color.  Our Epiphany of 2020 and early 2021 has already changed the way we are thinking and acting at the federal level and toward our Oregon legislative priorities for 2021.  And will forever transform the way we continue to vote.  The song of the angels is stilled.  The star in the sky is not gone, but has now come to rest in peasant Nativities throughout the marginalized neighborhoods of our world.  For Christians, Christ lives there.  For all of us, these are the birth places of hope.  They define the work of Christmas! And so we must keep on demanding no less and legislating much more and where legislation proves impotent, peacefully stand in the way, be non-violent non-cooperators.  From our newest home to yours, keep on keeping on.  And may peace embrace all.

Perhaps the most “sudden and striking” gift of the Inauguration was Amanda Gorman’s reading of her new poem, The Hill We Climb.

With millions of others who are learning to hope and dream again, I also quote this inaugural gem:

We seek harm to none and harmony for all
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew
That even as we hurt, we hoped
That even as we tired, we tried
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious
Not because we will never again know defeat
but because we will never again sow division
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
And no one shall make them afraid
If we’re to live up to our own time
Then victory won’t lie in the blade
But in all the bridges we’ve made
That is the promise to glade
The hill we climb
If only we dare.

Amanda Gorman (from The Hill We Climb)