Last Saturday, Tim and I snowshoed up the Split Rock River with some friends. We started from the wayside rest just off highway 61. As we walked down to the riverbed I began to worry because there was no discernible trail. We would be finding our own way. I had never done that before.
The wind and fresh snow had swept away the footprints of previous travelers. We tentatively made our way, steering clear of the open water. We walked slowly listening for the cracking of ice, winding our way around the open water. Tim went through the ice twice. Luckily, he never went in very deep, just deep enough to ice up the buckles on his snowshoes.
I often stopped to listen to the river’s beautiful gurgling sound. We had to bushwhack our way through the woods around one very open part of the river. The four of us made it, stepping over grasses and around trees. We listened for the river on our right as we went this new way.
Eventually we found ourselves further up the river where it was more protected. There you could see where a single cross-country skier had made their way. There was a fresh layer of snow on their tracks. We traveled on. There was such beauty all around us as the sides of the river grew steeper and closed in. Trees clung to the rugged rocks and translucent, aquamarine ice hung down.
I was glad we had ventured on even when I was worried that there was no real way at first. I shared some of my river adventure with the women at the St. Louis County Jail on Wednesday afternoon. It was good to be with them again, a covid lock-down and bad weather had kept me away for a couple of weeks. They took turns reading the Bible out loud. We read together the story of the magi and their journey to find Jesus. The magi too were a bit off in their journey and did a bit of bushwhacking themselves as they followed the star.
After a long journey from what is now Iran, they go to Jerusalem thinking that if a king has been born, he must be there in the capitol city. Nope, not there. So the then King Herod consults the scribes and priests who tell them that according to scripture it is Bethlehem where the Messiah will be born.
The Magi were nine miles off, Bethlehem is nine miles from Jerusalem. They listen to the stories and travel on in a new way. Not just a new journey, they must also reorganize their thoughts and reorient themselves. They seek not a king but a child. A child who changes everything.
Herod asked them to return to him and let him know when they find this child. But they are warned in a dream, and they go home by another way. They travel home on another road, but they also have a new orientation to life, they will never be the same. God’s wide love was revealed to them. A love made flesh in a baby born to poor parents, a child sought by unclean shepherds and magi. All the players in this crucial story are outsiders. Outsiders calling us all to consider another way to live, a way not based in power but love.
My friend, Naomi Tim, and I shared this story of the magi with the women at the county jail on Wednesday. We then talked together about their actual dreams and the new paths these dreams were perhaps telling them to travel. It was a poignant hour with lots of tears. They shared their dreams of mothers and children, dreams that held despair over what was lost and dreams that held out hope for new life in this life and the next. I was reminded once again that God loves us all, but especially those on the margins, the outsiders.
Several years ago, after sharing the story of the magi with a different group of women at the jail, one of the women asked another, “Where is the hope for you when you need to go home by another way?” We all held our breath. What would this young mom who seemed to be in a deep darkness say? She was abandoned by her own parents at 17 and had been drinking since she was a pre-teen.
I will always remember her answer. She said her hope was in Jesus Christ and in the gift of her son. She told us all about how she wrote letters to her son. He was two at the time and she had just sent him a story book that she had drawn. She had drawn the story of The Little Engine that Could. The women all said her drawings were amazing. In hearing her story, it made me wonder who really needed that book more, her, or her son. “I think I can, I think I can..”
We journey on, chugging up our own mountains. Let us pause to listen to one another, encourage one another. We might fall in at times, but we if we listen deeply, we can hear the gurgling of love, and see the beauty in the ice and stone. Yes, we are all on our way home, called to travel by another way.
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