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January 6, 2003

Epiphany

So what is left?
At the end of the Holidays?
After the songs and the snowfall; the parties and the presents; midnight and morning? All in celebration of what?
To know that would be an epiphany indeed.

On the First Day of Christmas I posed three Riddles. I assumed that they all had the same answer, and that I knew what it was. Yet I've also said that Riddles may have more than one answer, if we can guess as much.

Who is as a Cherry without any Stone?
My Mother told me that this is Mary, and I suppose she should know better than I. Neither womb nor fruit can take precedence in a birth of this kind.
Or of any kind.

Who is Child and Parent at once?
One who is Father and Son to Himself, yes, but less rarely, anyone who has fostered children, and not by blood alone. Every parent was once a child, nor is that status lost, though generations pass.

Who is Born with the Reborn Sun?
I, for one; along with many others, if only by happenstance. Yet if there is One beyond coincidence, He was only born that all of us might take heart in the returning light of a new morning, a new year, and the same old Sun.

Maybe you have other answers, wiser than mine.
Let them open a way into the New Year.
Then you will be as wise as those travelers from afar, who, guided by a star, came to realize.

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