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"Once upon a time three Oriental kings made a star-guided journey, carrying with them three gifts.  Their gifts are history:  gold, frankincense and myrrh.  After they had presented them to the mysterious infant king lying in the stable where the star had led them, they returned home by a different route.  As the three kings traveled homeward, each carried a souvenir of his star-journey carefully hidden from the others.
 
When they stopped the first might on their way home, their attendants pitched the silk pavillions and made camp.  As the crescent moon appeared in the west, theyfinished their supper and retired.  Even the camel drivers were asleep and all was silent.  King Balthasar, however, sat alone in his tent, in the glow of a brass lamp, reflecting on the gift of gold he had given the GOd-King in Bethlehem.  He smiled at himself for the need he had felt to take something, a small token of remembrance, from that insignificant stable where the infant lay.
By the light of the lanp he opened a golden case and removed a single piece of yellow straw, saying aloud, "I came on this quest to seek a king, a real King, because I did not feel kingly.  I have always doubted my royalty.  What makes me feel different frommy camel drivers?  Do I not also have the same needs for food and drink, for love and physical comfort as they?  How is a king different , after all, from a carpenter or any commoner?"
 
Slowly he held the straw up to the light as he mused, "I Balthasar, followed a star, seeking a God-King to confirm my own kingship, for are not all crowns made of cardboard and all thrones of straw?"  He replaces the straw in its precious case and continued, "Back in Bethlehem, the father of that child was only a common peasant, a simple village craftsman; yet he was more regal than any king I have eer seen.  And the child's mother - was she not queenly in her simple dignity?  What, I asked myself, is the source of this inner nobility that can change peasants into royalty?"
 
King Balthasar walked to the entrance of his tent, looking up at the night sky crowded with stars.  "I saw the answers to my questions in the eyes of that infant.  True nobility comes from an annointing of the heart, not of the head!"  Quietly the king returned to his bed, and as he retired he thought to himself,  "I am returning home by a different route and as a far different king.  I roder to Bethlehime on my camel, high above the faceless sea of commoners, slaves and beggars, wondering about my kingship.  I return home understanding that my camel drivers and every woman, man and child I saw along the way are roayl persons deserving of my respect and homor.  Indeed, that star was an omen of a new age.  It has raised the curtain of history, not upon a revolution of slaves and servants overthrowing thrones, this is an evolution, as slaves and servants become equal to kings and queens!"  As Balthasar blew out his oil lamp, he sighed, "Such an age is beyond imagination."
The three silk pavilions were raised and the camels bedded down as the noises of the caravan quieted on the second night.  Everyone had retired, and the last embers of the campfire glowered orange in the darkness.  King Melchior stood outside his pavilion, holding an oblong ivory box encrusted with rare jewels.  The three kings had ridden these past two days in silenece, each one reflecting on the events in that little village of Bethlehem.  What, indeed, had they seen in that poor, yet somehow sacred, stable?
 
Looking upward, King Melchior spoke, as if to the sky:" I followed one of your wondrous lights, hoping to find the answer to the most ancient of all riddles, the puzzle of life and death.  My gift of myrrh was a sign of my inner quest.  Mryyh is the ointment used for burial, and gifts tell a great deal about the giver.  Ah yes, even kings die, no matter how great or powerful they are.  Somewhere in this world, there must be a magic charm, a secret to escape death."
 
He opened the box, removong a single yellow straw.  "I was ashamed," he mused, "to tell the other two that I wanted to take akeepsake from that stable."  For a long time he stoodsilent, looking at the straw he hel.  "I remember once reading a passage from one of their prophets of long ago; his name was Isaih, as I recall.  He promised a king to these people, and when he comes'he will destroy death forever...and God will wipe away the tears from all faces...' "
King Melchior held the hollow straw up to his eye, pointing it toward the most brilliant star in the night sky.  "Death, I now see, is like this straw - merely a passageway from one life to another.  And we slip through as easily as my breath passes through this straw."  Softly the wise man blew through his upraised straw.
 
At that moment King Caspar stepped out of the shadows, asking "Melchior, old friend, what are you doing with that piece of straw?  Are you practicing a new form of magic?"
 
"OH, Caspar, what a star you gave me!  This? It's a..that is..it's only a piece of straw
"Oh, Caspar, what a star you gave me!  This? It's a..that is..it's only a piece of ....I took it rom the stable back there in Bethlehem.  I wanted something to remind me of what I saw there, the infant we came to adore.  As I knelt before him, I saw something more than an infant with his two humble parents.  I sensed an absence of fear in his mother and father, a sense of meaning in their simple lives.  And in the child's eyes I saw the answer to a riddle that has given me no peace through all these many years."
Caspar chuckled.  "Well, no fool like an old fool.  Go to bed friend, we have a hard ride ahead of us tommorow."  He laughed gently," A souvenir, you took a souvenir....."
 
On the third night after the three silk pavilions had  been erected and the camels fed and watered, the camp gew silent, as quiet as the vast sky above.  King Caspar stood at the entrance of his tent watching the stars as they turned in their ancient orbits.  "How strange," he thought, "that wwe have ridden for three days without speaking to ont another."  He himself had said nothing more about his laughter the night before, nor had melchior tried to explain why he had taken a souvenir from the stable.
 
King CAspar took his leather saddlebag from inside his tent and opened a side pouch.  He removed a silver flask inscribed with intricate heiroglyphics.  Openng the flask and reverelty placing it on the sand, he knelt before it.  Hemade a profound bow and, after a few moments of silent adoration, he straghtened but remained kneeling.  Looking at the stars, he spoke:" I confess to you I also took a souvenir from that stable.  I came on this star-led adventure beasue I needed to find a God to believe in .  My gift of incense, a traditional offering to the holy, was a telltale sign of my search for belief.  Oh, I believed in some sort of impersonal divinity, but I could put no form or reason to it."
 
In the stillness, the silk cloth of the pavilion rustled softly.  "I, the great Caspar,"  he spoke mockingly,"was the agnostic kind.  I came seeking a religious experience, some divine revalation.  And my dissapointment must have been the greatest as we entered that livestock stable.  I was the last of the three to approach the infant to adore him.  How un-godlike it was- the shabby stable, and infant lying in a bed of straw in a makeshift crib, his two peasant parents beside him.  There were no heavenly lights, no divine thunderrumbled around us, no angelic music filled the stale.  And my gift of incense in its chest seemed humorously out of place."
Caspar removes a single yellow straw from the flask and bowed before it.  "I am sorry I laughed at Melchior;  I was laughing at myself, really, for I had also taken a souvenir from that place!  I remember it as if it were this very night.  How slowly I came forward to kneel before the infant!  It seemed cruel to refuse to do so, and embarassment to my two fellow kings, so I simply pretended adoration.  Then that tiny baby looked at me. Everything and everything was suddenly bathed in light.  There was a brilliance in those small eyes greater that the star we had followed.  The stable had become more awesome than any great temple I hadever visited; everything, evn the straw on the floor was aflame with glory.  That's when I picked you up."
 
Leaving his tent, Caspar climbed to the top of a silent sand dune, and, looking up into the starry night, he raised his fragile straw to the heavens.  "That child has come to end all religion and to make temples needless,"  he said"Religion, by its name, is that which separateslife from God.  this child, I know, will somedaybring together life and religion as one.  Common and ordinary life will become sacred.  There will be no need for temples."  His arm swept outward to encompass the entire night sky.  "This will be the Great Temple!"
 
Out of the shadows sepped Balthasar and Melchior, and the three stood without speaking, surrounded by the silence of the stars.  Finally, King Balthasar said,"Each of usis going homea different way. We  began our journey as men set apart by our regal birth, by our priestly knowledge, different from the common people we encounteres.  Noble companions, we have ridden three days now from Bethlehem.  Did we find what we came seeking?  If so, how has our view of life changed?"  For a long time the three kingsstood silent.  Then they began to speak, each in turn.
 
"I Balthasar, have seen the beginning of a new age, the end of a time when only a select few are given reverence, treated as gods come to earth.  I have seen the end to kings and queens as the annointed ones, for now every personwill be seen as royal, unique and possesed of great dignity."
 
"I, Melchior, have seen the death of death.  Now I see only life in countless forms of transformation"
 
"And I, Caspar,what have I seen?  I have seen God, and now I see God everywhere!"
 
Hope you enjoyed this as much as I did!
 
Anne

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