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With a running stream and a watermill beating the darkness, and three trees in the low sky.

As the Magi descend into the valley in the second stanza of “Journey of the Magi”, Eliot adds several Biblical allusions. First, the symbol of Jesus as the “living water” as depicted in John 4:10-14 is mirrored in the running stream. The wheels of the watermill are “beating the darkness” and we see an allusion to Jesus as the “light of the world” (John 8:12). In stark contrast to the life-giving details of water and light, we see the “three trees in the low sky”, a reference to both the Holy Trinity but also a foreshadow of the future crucifixion.

In this stanza, Eliot draws a parallel to his own “darkness to light.” After his self-imposed ten-year penance following his abandonment of Vivienne, Eliot married Valene Flecher, his secretary, in 1957. By all accounts, it was a happy marriage. After years of darkness, Eliot had come into the light.

Caring for a husband with both mental and physical issues was an exhausting, uphill battle. I longed for an easier life than I was living, a surcease from what was punishing work. I found refuge in places of running water; the beach if I could manage a day’s escape, or the river at the park if I only had an hour. Both places reminded me of the living water that is Jesus.

REFLECTION: Was there a special place that brought you solace and peace during a difficult journey?

Then, at dawn, we came down to a temperate valley, wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetables.

The second stanza of the poem brings us, at last, out of the hardships and desperations and into a place of hope. The climate in the valley is mild, a contrast to the wintry weather that marked much of the Magi’s journey. There is green growth here, reminiscent of the Garden of Eden. This is a place where the weary Magi can rest a bit before pressing on, confident that they are nearing the end.

As in his poem, “The Waste Land,” Eliot’s Magi long for the breath of life. Throughout the wasteland of his marriage to Vivienne, Eliot turned from worldly ambition and the use of his gift for fame to service of truth and beauty. His guilt at abandoning the mentally unstable Vivienne wracked him for years and he turned to prayer and poetry.

During those difficult and exhausting years of Ron’s illness, I looked for what I called “pockets of peace”: a day Ron had no surgery, a meal I actually ate at the table with the family, or a chance to watch the sunset from our own back deck. Each small moment gave me hope to keep pressing on.

REFLECTION:

In one of your own difficult journeys, what gave you hope and kept you moving forward?

According to Luke 2:3, “Everyone went to register in their own town” which meant Joseph and his pregnant betrothed, Mary, needed to travel to Bethlehem in Judea, the town of David. The reason Luke 2:7 gives for Mary forced to give birth in a stable was that there was “no room for them at the inn.” This may be true, but it is just as likely that the couple was too poor to pay an exorbitant fee. It also indicates that even though Joseph had been born in Bethlehem, he no longer had family there with whom he and Mary might stay.

And the lack of shelters, and the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly

and the villages dirty, charging high prices

Sleeping in snatches, with the voices ringing in our ears,

“This is all folly.”

In the last line of Sanza One, Eliot concludes not with the physical difficulties the Magi encountered, but with their self-doubts. Just what was “all folly”? The travel itself, the promise of the Christ Child? The voice they heard directly contradicted the command the Magi had heard at the beginning of their quest, although the Bible makes no mention of such a command.

With pressure from his literary friends, a disastrous marriage to a dancer, Vivienne Haigh Wood, and a near nervous breakdown, Eliot might have had reasons to believe his conversion “All folly.” But like the Magi, Eliot did not turn back from his conviction but remained a Christian until his death.

The Christian walk is not always an easy one. John 16:33 makes this promise: “In the world, you have tribulation. But take heart, I have overcome the world.” We have this assurance just as the Magi had the prophecies.

“Sleeping in snatches” was my usual nighttime pattern during the last nine months of my husband’s life. There was always some need of his that called me out of bed!

Reflection:

I never regretted accepting Jesus as my Savior, but there were plenty of times I wondered if I had the strength to finish my journey with an ill spouse. Did you ever feel God had called you to a task you were ill-equipped to handle?

A hard time we had of it.

At the end, we preferred to travel all night.

The first line echoes the harshness of the journey the Magi endured. With no rooms, dirty cities, and unfriendly villagers, the entourage decided to travel at night. The “night” in Eliot’s poem is both figurative and literal. At this point in the journey, they had no idea how much longer they would travel. Traveling at night not only shortens the trip but keeps them out of the heat of the daylight sun. In this second-to-last line of Stanza One, we can easily identify with the moods of the Magi; they are discouraged.

TS Eliot wrote in his poem, “Ash Wednesday”—his first published work since his conversion—”Because I do not hope to live again, because I do not hope, because I do not hope to live.” Eliot was turning away from his previous view of the world as a wasteland and seeking, as the Magi did, something worth living for.

During my many years as a spousal caregiver, I could have recited this line every day: I had a hard time of it. But like the Magi, I followed something other than my own desires.

Reflection:

As hard as the dark nights of the soul can be, all suffering has a purpose. Romans 5:3-5 says, “We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know they help us to develop our endurance.”

How have your own trials strengthened your faith and prepared you for the rest of your journey?

If the camels in Eliot’s poem were a problem, so were the men who cared for the camels! The Magi who followed the Star had not planned out their journey, nor adequately prepared for it, but they saw their appointment as divine: find the one promised in Isaiah 14:1, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”

The camel men, however, were hired hands. They had no vested interest in the trip other than getting paid. And when the going got rough, they simply left. Back to the silken girls and the sherberts, no doubt, or at least to an easier task.

Romans 13:12-14 says, “The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore, let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.” TS Eliot’s conversion was his own, “casting off as darkness” and attempting to put on the light. But it’s not an easy thing to do. Many temptations in the world call us away from the journey to Christ. Often those newly converted feel a spiritual high, a sense of excitement. It has been described as a transformative experience. Sooner or later, reality sets in and the road becomes rough and rocky, and we grumble.

Did I grumble during the years I cared for an ill husband and carried far too many burdens? Yes. More than once. But unlike the camel men, I never ran away. I knew that I had been called to a journey of my own, and while I did not really know the way, I knew that God did.

REFLECTION: What were some of the challenges you faced during your own faith walk? How did you endure them?

Before his conversion to Christianity, Eliot had been known as the “enfant terrible” of the Bloomsbury set— which included Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, and E.M. Forster—writers in the first half of the twentieth century who rejected the social conventions of the day. In fact, Virginia Woolf predicted that Eliot would soon be tired of “Christian stiffness” and return to his former decadent lifestyle. But Eliot remained a firm believer in Christ for the remainder of his life.

In these lines of “Journey of the Magi”, Eliot asserts that the men had lived a prosperous life, able to afford the luxuries of that lifestyle. The gifts the Magi brought to the Christ Child would have been worth 4 million dollars in today’s economy. Rather than yearning to go back to that life of ease, the Magi on their journey became ashamed of the lives they had led, lives that had nothing to do with God. Elliot, as well, regretted the choices he had made before his conversion.

REFLECTION: Many people have a past that still haunts them. Jeremiah 31:3 says “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” No matter what we have done, God still loves us! If something from your past still bothers you, take a moment now to confess it and ask forgiveness.

Here’s something you probably didn’t know: camels were domesticated by frankincense traders to make the long journey from Southern Arabia to the Middle East, a distance of about 900 miles! Job 16:13 uses the term “gall” to mean “that which is bitter.” And these camels, despite their ability to travel long distances and carry heavy loads, were sick of the journey! They laid down and, as their famous stubborn nature implies, simply refused to move. The Biblical account of the Magi does not mention that they traveled on camels.

I can relate, however, to Eliot’s description of the camels as being “sore-footed.” After nineteen years of caring for an ill spouse and more hospitalizations and surgeries than I care to remember, I was “sore-footed” in those last months before my husband died. In a word, exhausted. Like the camels, I wanted to just lay down—probably not in the snow—and call it a day. But unlike the camels, I knew that I needed to finish my journey as a wife because of the promise I had made at the altar.

REFLECTION: There were many times during the years of Ron’s illness when I just wanted to lay down and quit. Have you ever wanted to give up, even though you—unlike the camels—knew your journey was worthwhile?

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The “Magi from the East” probably took the same path Abraham traveled from Ur to Canaan. Led by the Star, Eliot makes it clear with these lines that the three travelers could not choose the time of their trip. Who would have intentionally set out in the dead of winter?

Eliot noted that he wrote this poem very quickly. ‘I had been thinking about it in church,’ he told his wife, Valerie, years later, ‘and when I got home I opened a half-bottle of Booth’s Gin, poured myself a drink, and began to write. By lunchtime, the poem, and the half-bottle of gin, were both finished.’

The Book of Matthew is the only one of the synoptic gospels to include the visit of the Magi. Scholars argue that it is possible because of the declaration of “kingship” that these three foreigners bring to the Infant.

Another interesting fact about the opening lines of “Journey” is that they are an almost direct quote from a sermon given in 1622 by a preacher named Lancelot Andrewes. Eliot puts the lines in quotations since they are not his original words:

“A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.”

How could a Magus. traveling to worship the Christ Child, quote a line from a 15th-century preacher? It and the use of Biblical quotations the Magi could not possibly know add to the mysterious narration of the story?

REFLECTION: These few lines make it clear that Eliot did not find the road to salvation to be an easy one. How hard—or easy—was it for you to accept the gift of Jesus? Were you, unlike the Magi, prepared for the journey?