So, men of wealth made the trip to their ancestral homes. They brought with them guards to protect them on the way. Guards who were defying the Emperor’s decree by being in the town of their employer, not their own. Caught between loyalty to their paymaster, and obedience to their Emperor, loyalty won out, but the price was high, and no one was happy. There was nothing left but the waiting. The men waiting to be registered and then their long trip home, the innkeep waiting to have his own home back.

The Innkeeper’s son also did not like these angry men. He kept himself as busy as he could in the stables in the back. The stables were no more than a cave, but the cave was quiet, so the Innkeeper’s son spent his hours in the cave taking care of the beasts.

He, too, was waiting for things to get back to normal. He could hardly have imagined that normal was about to change, and that change was going to happen in the quiet stable where he was finding refuge. The loud and rowdy common room, full as it was with music and stories, was destined to be a footnote in history.

I will light the fire with a torch made up of campaign fliers for both Mark Begich and Dan Sullivan.  No matter who wins the Senate race (and I doubt we will know by Guy Fawkes night), the winner will go to Washington to take part in an elected body deriving its power not from God, or even from the allegedly divine right of a king, but from our Constitution, an imperfect document that can be changed to reflect the will of the people, all of whom it governs equally.

I will burn theocracy in effigy as I reflect on what the Fourteenth Amendment to that Constitution has meant to my friends this year, several of whom are now married.

As I watch theocracy burn, I will say a prayer of thanks to God that I was born into a country where I have never been compelled into professing a religion and therefore have never had cause to wonder whether my religion was, in fact, my own.

Theocracy will burn with paper extolling the virtues of both local and national candidates.   The fire will light up the night with joyous relief.  Relief that this $50 Million campaign is over, but also at a process where people of uncommon background can come together and send representatives to parliaments that are, no matter how imperfect, far better than the alternative.

They were the first to witness the miracle. Angles flat out told them about the miracle, but they still could not see it until The Miracle spoke their names. “Mary,” Jesus said, and in that moment, she knew what angles themselves had been unable to convey.

I don’t think we’re that different today. We are surrounded by miracles that we are unable to see, even when they are described to us. Yet, when one of those miracles speaks to us directly, we learn something as if we have known it all our lives.

Happy Easter.

Even so, regardless of the part I played on Friday, on Sunday, the Good News would be given to me, for me. There is not a thing I could do to change that. There is not a thing anyone can do that puts them beyond the Good News, and that’s the part that Christians need to keep reminding each other.

We do not have the authority, nor should we ever have the desire, to place limits on Grace. God’s love is given to everyone; we can not presume to declare otherwise.

To find the lost
To heal the broken
To feed the hungry
To release the prisoners
To rebuild the nations
To bring peace among brothers
To make music in the heart.

-An unattributed Quaker