It is the day after Epiphany.

For those of you who aren't up on your Christian holidays, Epiphany celebrates the arrival of the wise men in Bethlehem.

And so our opening words come from the poem "Journey of the Magi" by T.S. Eliot.

Most of the poem describes how difficult the journey was, and it concludes like this:

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.