Mark the pathways lonely trod

of seer sage and mystic –

shunned yet bearing with their gifts,

first-footing honoured mystics.

They weren’t kings, they were magi. Outsiders, foreigners, diviners called by the divine to honour the arrival of everymans unlikely King. They came from ‘afar’ but that may not have simply been a geographical issue. Following a leading may have taken much faith, may have been costly to them. I don’t want to dress them up as kings and give them a mantle of nobility. I want to honour what was already honourable, that they were seen from afar and invited in, just as we are.

When all reflect on what’s been pillaged

will there be focus on God’s image?

People can be robbed of many things, the worst of which is their dignity and self-worth.  We have such capacity for judging and criticising others and shouldn’t really be surprised by it, yet it remains shocking. ‘Othering’ others goes on all the time, but we don’t want to see it when comes from ourselves. I’ve had a bad year of being othered, a particularly scourging experience. Outrage, hurt, and resentment have flowed out of that, and truths have trickled in.

We are all made for goodness, as Desmond Tutu has said. Much as it can be hard to see it in ourselves while we’re hurting, it is often so challenging to see the goodness in others once we have othered them. We’re more likely to gather affirmations of that othering, than seek a new facet of them to gaze on.But it’s there if we’ll dare to look, and it’s there even if we don’t look. It may take time, but looking back I hope we will all see the distortions that fears and pride have wrought in our perceptions, and all find the goodness in ourselves, and what’s mirrored in the othered.