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Amid all the news these past few days about rising tensions in the Middle East, Christmas now seems very far away. But for Christians in that part of the world, as well as across the globe, today is still a day of great celebration, the final feast of Christmas. It is the feast of the Epiphany, which marks the moment when the wise men or magi arrived in Bethlehem to see the Christ child, directed there by following a star. Epiphany is a word of Greek origin, meaning a moment of revelation. It was something that fascinated the poet T S Eliot, who wrote his poem Journey of the Magi about it in 1927. Last week came the news that an archive of letters written by Eliot to Emily Hale, said to have been his muse, was being opened after being sealed for 50 years after her death. This literary event could be said to involve several epiphanies: the letters being available, the love expressed in them, Eliot’s own statement about them he arranged to be published simultaneously with the archive. But unlike the pleasure of new insights into a poet’s mind, or the sudden experience of love for another human being, as Eliot enjoyed with Emily Hale, this epiphany for the wise men was, according to Eliot’s interpretation, a difficult, even painful experience. There was the journey, as his opening lines recorded, that tested them. They set out in bitter cold in the very dead of winter. But the hardship they endured wasn’t just about the cold. The magi were discomfited. Something happened that changed them. They went to find a baby, a birth, but felt it was something else too, a kind of death of their previous existence. As Eliot put it, they were no longer at ease in the old dispensation. In Scripture there is little about the Magi, but in Matthew’s Gospel he records that the trio ask a question: where is the infant? They set out, following a star, and were utterly engaged with the answer. There is a sense of wonder about their response. They trust in God, however difficult the outcome. It seems to me that Eliot in his poem is articulating something not just about the Magi but about human experience. Though much of life is taken up with the ordinary, there is a journeying of some sorts for everyone, questions to be asked, sometimes a different course to be taken. The magi show Christians that the way to God can be complicated, surprising, and even deeply disturbing. The old dispensation, as Eliot puts it, won’t do any more – if we are willing to heed the call.