Yesterday I travelled to Manchester for a 'quiet day' for Epiphany entitled "Follow Your Star" and which centred on creative writing.  This was quite a big deal for me - I was the "straight As" student who always C for creative writing because, as still happens today, when the words travel out of my brain into my arm they get lost.  I could write A+ discursive essays, and was grateful that at least one such always appeared in English exams, but ask me to write creatively...

Anyway, yesterday a group of eight women (as it happened) gathered together to ponder aspects of star following, receive some input on the creative writing process and then have a go.  At the end of the day, we shared our work - a truly humbling and affirming experience for everyone, and a great diversity of work from poetry and hymnody to story-telling and meditation; humour that made us laugh out loud, simplicity that expressed profound ideas and moments of awe and wonder.

This is my attempt, which drew on various ideas expressed during the day...

The stars just "are"

Silent sentinels since time began,

Seeing all things, saying nothing.

Was it under the gaze of Orion

That Jacob stood at Jabbok's shore

Fearful of what lay ahead,

Wrestled all night with an angel,

Then, limping, crossed the river?

Did the watchful eye of Virgo

Trace the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem,

To the place where a young woman

Laboured through the night

To bring forth her son?

What familiar constellations spangled the sky

As eastern astrologers rode onwards through the night

Seeking - quite what, they did not know;

Encountered the divine in the face of a child

Then left by another route?

The stars just "are"

Silent sentinels since time began,

Seeing all things, saying nothing.

Guardians of my own wakeful, restless nights

Wrestling with God

Labouring to bring ideas to birth

Seeking, quite what I cannot know,

And experiencing -

Just occasionally -

Epiphany.