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God has come among us. A joyous Christmas to all!
The gift of keeping Advent is this: Christmas is newly-born only last night, and now there are twelve days of it to relish. God rest you merry one and all, every early and late, every dark, every light.
I am still ailing, and spending a lot of time looking out the window because I feel too fuzzy to do much else, but... the rewards of this gazing are huge. I watch the sky change through the course of the day. I see birds, starlings and sparrows for the most part, picking the last fruits off the branches. Their feathers are puffed up for insulation and they all look like feather balls. If my cat happens to be sitting on the sill, he watches them quietly, motionless except for the twitching tip of his tail.
Yesterday and today a pair of cardinals has spent time on the branch closest to my window. He is extravagantly red, she more muted, together they are glorious. Watching them, I am altogether happy.
It's simple. Exuberantly extravagant beauty lands on the nearest branch. Pay attention. Consider the cardinals.
This weekend's storms have stripped the leaves from the tree outside my window, leaves that had stubbornly remained green weeks after every other leaf in town had turned gold, red, or brown, and then had been equally adamant about resisting gravity. This morning, though, light filters to my windows through a lacy network of bare branches.
I am home sick abed, felled by the Grande Dame of All Colds. Sore-throated, fuzzy-headed, sniffling and coughing, and not at all glamourous, I have not been this ill in a long time. My apartment is a TV-Free zone, so I am alternating drowsing with attempts to read and listen to music. Yesterday was Gaudete Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent. Gaudete means rejoice, and I think I can stop some of my grumbling about premature Christmas music long enough to suggest some of my favorite Christmas rejoicing music to you all. It's not a long list, just my favorites.
The Sounds of Christmas, a long out-of-print Fred Waring recording, is a lovely collage of Christmas music that gives the impression of walking through a town where there are carollers on every corner. The first singing voice you hear on the recording, and the last, is that of my grandfather, Leonard Kranendonk. A more beautiful baritone cannot be imagined. I miss him.
Now is the Caroling Season and Caroling, Caroling, also Fred Waring. These are both available on CD. The singing is gorgeous and joyful, the diction unaffected yet all the words are completely understandable. Choir and other vocal ensemble directors, take note!
On Yoolis Night, by Anonymous4. Medieval carols and motets sung flawlessly, with soprano Ruth Cunningham's pure soaring voice lifting the listener to bliss.
He Is Christmas, Take Six. The perfect balance to the preceding recording, this acapella joy-fest is grounded in the body, and one must dance. Must!
Of course the Manhattan Transfer has done some lovely holiday recordings, too: The Christmas Album and An Acapella Christmas.
Little Women, the fim soundtrack by Thomas Newman. One of my yearly rituals is the re-reading of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, a book I have been devoted to since I first read it when I was about 7. More than anything, I wanted to grow up to be Jo March. This novel has been adapted for film four times so far, once in 1918 as a silent, once in 1933 (Katherine Hepburn portayed Jo), and again in 1949 (my least favorite. June Allyson as Jo? I think not. Elizabeth Taylor as Amy? The mind reels.) My favorite of all these is director Gillian Armstrong's 1994 version, starring Winona Ryder as Jo and Susan Sarandon as Marmee - you can read more about this on the IMDB site. Thomas Newman's score is evocative and supportive and beautiful. Why is this on my Christmas list? Because the book opens at Christmas time, and as originally planned by Alcott, closes on the following Christmas (what we now know as Little Women was originally two books,Little Women and Good Wives), and so for me it has been part of my Christmas for ... hmmm... a few years.
Though at this moment I feel like I am going to be coughing all the rest of my natural life (you know that feeling!), I think that next year I will be able to add one more Christmas collection to the list: my own, which I am hoping to record in 2008.
But for now, more tea. I continue to wish you all a blessed Advent.
Here is the first heads-up for my January gig in New York. I will be singing at the Metropolitan Room on 22nd St here in Manhattan this coming January 23 - 27, with one show nightly at the civilized hour of 7:30 PM (7 on the 27th). So lovely to go onstage well before my bedtime! Tex Arnold will be accompanying me again, and we are meeting tomorrow morning to start to put the show together. We have some new tunes to look at; right this moment I have no idea what the song list will turn out to be. No idea, none. Stay tuned...
1. There are still two weeks left of Advent, two weeks until Christmas Eve, two weeks before Christmas songs are actually à propos. Please can't we wait? St. Jude, where are you? I may have a lost cause here.
All this holy time of Advent can give one time to quietly consider what it means to have a savior, born as one of us, come to save, to heal, to illuminate, to energize us, kick us lovingly into action, and to bind us all together as children of God. Perhaps you are ready for the Lord to be born. I need time. Oh boy do I need time, very serious prayer time. The gentle Jesus meek and mild is the most powerful force for change that I have ever encountered, and I need to get ready to - again! - have everything change. Everything. Every single thing.
2. I grew up on Christmas music, on Fred Waring's recordings that featured my grandfather's glorious baritone, and Robert Shaw's exquisite choral work. I love them. I do not have a bah! humbug! bone in my body. But raised as I was in a Reformed tradition, I spent my childhood being pounded from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve with "Christ is born" songs, when he wasn't yet, so what was Advent? and then it was Christmas Day and by Christmas afternoon, poof! it was over. What happened to the other 12 days? What do you mean, just a song?
3. Lent leads to joy, but it passes through great pain. Advent, too, moves soberly, but straight to joy.
Advent. Waiting for something.
We wait for God, who is always with us. to come to be us, to be one of us, to join us in the web of senses through which we experience the world, and with which we try to capture and comprehend God. The language of the body, through the body, is the language we understand, for better and for worse.
We wait for God to come to us, take on our vision, and teach us how to use our eyes. If, in the Incarnation, God's human eyes are like our human eyes, then what is to prevent us from seeing as God sees? Only the hardness of our hearts, which we are promised can be changed. I will take away your hearts of stone and give you hearts of flesh (Ezekial 36:26).
We wait to be shown that what God asks of us can be done by us, in our bodies, in our senses, in our earthbound lives. We can love each other right here. We can hear each other right now. We can touch in comfort and blessing with the hands we have in this life. Jesus comes and shows us the way.
Christmas is an extravagant celebration of the Word made flesh. Come, Lord Jesus.
Yes, I am still here. Many distractions and scheduling crunches have elbowed their way into this moving-toward-Christmas season. But this afternoon I dug down to the actual surface of my desk, and have been promised a day of rotten weather tomorrow, which will be perfect for staying in and writing. There is so much to tell. For now, today is the first Sunday of Advent, and here in New York City a beautiful snow drifted down from the grey morning sky. Because I only found my way to it last Lent, this was the first time I have seen the Cathedral through falling snow.
It's a really BIG snow globe...
