The Feast of Epiphany, Three Kings Day, or the day that Befana, the old witch rides her broomstick over chimneys and from the sack slung over her back distributes candy or coal to the good and bad children of the land. It’s also thought to be the birthday of Joan d’Arc; which means that the transition from Ordinary Days into Christmas celebrates the birth of a male savior, and the transition from Christmas into Epiphany begins with the birth of a female savior - both of whom we will kill as heretics between the next solstice and equinox.

The conversation could turn towards gender roles and The Church, but in this moment I’d rather explore the idea that the inherent tension within a duelistic system exists in order to keep us kinetic. It is our narrow preference of a quantifiable binary that keeps us in stasis, not the organic spiralic movement towards evolutionary adaptation.

Humans who allow themselves to be in partnership with the Earth in an intimate way bear a beyond-their-bones knowing of this rhythm of Nature, this spiral dance of Jesus and Joan, hero and heretic, death and rebirth. In this spin around the seasons or life cycles or the skies, they know that the friction between dark and light, warm and cold, mortal and immortal, stamen and pistil, is where the essentially dark sparks of new life flicker into being.

Not all of us celebrate Epiphany, or Three Kings, or visits from Befana, but today an invitation is extended into a celebration of gratitude for our own epiphanies, because Epiphany always comes bearing gifts. Gifts that are better than expected or imagined. This is true whether we’re celebrating the gold, frankincense, and myrrh that came with the Wise Kings, a candy-filled stocking from an old witch, or the sudden and clear understanding that a moment of deep clarity brings. Let it fill us with wonder, joy, and awe for the journey in and out of the labyrinth of our lives.

Death is transfiguration, not transformation. Transformation is a larger, multi-step process that includes several transfigurations and is infinitely ever-unfolding.

Death is one of the required transfigurations of Transformation. Yes, eventually death of the physical self, but all along the journey of our vibrant physical lives, we are faced with many opportunities to die. Any opportunity to trade the known for the unknown is a transfiguration. Any opportunity to shed the defenses, barriers, patterns, and ways of being, thinking, or doing is a transfiguration. Any opportunity that empties us out beyond the barest of bare, taking us to the place below rock bottom, redesigning our essentials and non-negotiables whether we want to or not, is a transfiguration.

Watch how the Earth does this, and trust that the same Life Force that moves the cycles of Nature is also at work in you because you are not separate from All Things. There will be autumns and winters and springs and summers and earthquakes and floods and droughts and pandemics and rainbows and blossoms and harvests and unseasonably wonderful joys around us on the Earth and in our own individual inner landscapes.

No form of death is a permanent stopping place, but it is a crucial place that demands our full surrender. Everything and everyone is constantly negotiating death and life and living and dying and it’s not always obvious which one is which.

Locate yourself in the Larger Cycle. Transfigure to transform.

Spring reveals herself with such demure tenderness that we easily overlook the strength and bravery it took her to wait cloaked in Winter’s heavy dormancy.

It’s worth celebrating the incremental changes, not only with the anticipation of lush green overcoming bare brown, but for the sweet tenderness that these first buds bring to bloom even after having experienced such harshness from the outside world.

May we, like Spring, emerge from our own heavy dormancies with our sweetness and vulnerability first visible.

May we, like Spring, having found home deep inside our own mud, reach strong roots deep into the darkness of our depths while also reaching with equal eagerness towards the light of our own potential and fullness of expression.

And may we, like Spring, willingly turn our faces to the Sun, the Conductor of the Great Symphony of Divine Timing, allowing ourselves to be guided through each song, trusting the rests as equally as we trust our moments of active participation in the music.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. - Thoreau

If you were to ask my skin about her experience of being in the full luminosity of the sun, she would describe warmth and a bright glow that makes everything sparkle. If you were to ask my eyes about her experience of being in the full luminosity of the sun, she would describe a profound darkness, a sudden disorientation, and a proprioceptive disconnect.

If what I am seeking is Truth, then in a moment where I am both illuminated and blinded, I must choose expansion. If I am truly seeking to find the Truth, I have to choose to hold myself open to the impossible task of simultaneously experiencing all that is true.

Learning to walk, we have to place our focus on each foot in a really narrow way in order for our brains to make new pathways. Learning to keep our core centered between our moving limbs, we sway heavily in all directions - sometimes crashing back down to where we began - as we build the muscles that hold us steady. Very few people would discourage a child stumbling through this process. In fact, most of us are extremely encouraging of any and every attempt made to move forward.

Learning to keep our Core Self centered while our foundational limbs - the parts of us designed to both stabilize and move us to new places and vantage points - move in opposite directions from each other is the work of an entire lifetime.

Choosing expansion doesn’t solve the discomfort of growing pains, nor does it allow us to live in an ever-present state of blissful consciousness. Expansion, consciousness raising, is about having the capacity to see and hold and move through more than we could before. It’s the way we know that our core is stable no matter which foot is on the ground and which one is floating through space towards some unknown future. Expansion is trusting the Truth of all that we can and cannot see when we are blinded by the light.

Almost and in-between. It’s almost time for our almost-visibles and almost-time-to’s to step into the fullness of the light of clarity, focus, fruition, and release. Almost.

Cycles begin and end almost all of the time, and some of the hardest work happens in the in-betweens when it feels like nothing is happening, nothing but fighting to keep your hope flickering and your thoughts from convincing you that you’re crazy for holding out. Here in the Land of Almosts we battle the demons of doubt and the dragons of despair. It’s natural to want to skip ahead to what seems like the easy or comfortable or celebratory parts of the year. But those somedays and almosts don’t fully arrive if we’re not present to the work of sowing and reaping on our plates right now.

Keep going. Almost is almost over.

If I’d known at the very beginning of everything that the process for transforming into my fullest potential would require the complete annihilation and rebuilding of everything I’ve known to be true about everything, over and over on repeat for infinity, would I still have chosen to participate? Would you?

I’d like to think so, and it seems that maybe I did, and maybe we have, because here I am and here you are and here we go again, and on and on, peeling back layers, growing, learning, changing, trying, failing, trying again, happy, sad, angry, excited, confused, clarified, dedicated, procrastinating, laid back, rushing ahead, exhausted, rested, open to all, singularly focused, holding everything and nothing all at once.

Precariously swaying in the cross-breeze of finite and infinite, our lives like leaves on the Tree of Life.