Christmas carols are known and loved the world over. Some of them are a part of everyone’s celebrations. Some are less well known. I think it’s likely that churches tend to sing the ones that focus on the events around which modern Christmas celebrations are based: shepherds, stars, angels, snow, animals, a baby. Understandable. But there are so many more.
I have loved Christmas carols ever since I can remember. Frankly, any carol. Later, I went looking for rare carols on Spotify. And in between those events, I found many of them on Christmas CDs I collected over the years, from A Winter’s Solstice albums and from an old Presbyterian hymnal.
In that hymnal, there are several carols that I especially like which are not heard any more, as in I have never heard them sung in any church in the US, ever. Some have a more British feel, and may still be sung by English choirboys, but I don’t know not being an English choirboy myself. These include three I want to mention, because not only are the tunes beautiful, the carols are lovely poems which highlight the reason we celebrate. These are “All this Night, My Heart Rejoices,” “See Amid the Winter’s Snow,” and “Christians, Awake.”
Who knows why they faded from the view of the modern church. Their message is incredibly good news. The music is incredibly powerful and joyful. They are a gift to anyone with ears to listen. They are an incredible testimony of the love that sustains us from cradle to grave to eternity. They are a gift from me to you.
What we grow up listening to informs our narratives and our lives. Here’s one example.
I have lived in the country since I was 27, and on the edge of a small town for 3 years before that. My family lived within a national park when I was a child, on the Crow Indian reservation in Montana, and literally on the side of a mountain in Juneau, Alaska. But my family also lived in the heart of San Francisco and in metro Denver, which is definitely not the country.
But I have never wanted to live in a city, and honestly, I’m not really a fan of visiting them. It does intimidate me to navigate a new place with so much traffic. But beyond that, I just don’t see the appeal. As much as I would like to visit the Smithsonian again, I haven’t made the trip into DC since I was nine years old. As much as I would like to gaze up at the State of Liberty, I haven’t liked it enough to take my family to NYC. I don’t feel a thrill when driving the one-ways downtown, and I never will.
Our family went camping in the west instead, in the most remote places we could find. One such was Canyonlands National Park. If you want to see the stars, go there. It is dark at night, darker than you can imagine if you’ve always lived in a city or town. Stars glow in every inch of sky.
And I currently do live in the country, off the beaten path, on a gravel road that turns off a ludicrously narrow county road. It’s quiet. There are frogs in the pond and fireflies every May and June.
This morning, I found myself thinking of a John Denver song I grew up listening to, “I Guess I’d Rather Be a Cowboy.” In the bridge, John opines, “I’d rather live on the side of a mountain than wander through canyons of concrete and steel; I’d rather laugh with the rain and sunshine, and lay down my sundown in some starry field.”
While there are many sentiments in music that it isn’t wise to follow, and while I certainly didn’t set out to deliberately pursue a life in the country rather than in the city, that’s where I am.
Come from Away is a musical like no other. The immanently danceable music of Newfoundland, the immediately evoked memories of the anguish of 9/11, the compassion of strangers, and the humor to be found in moments of complete uncertainty have been interlaced to create a story overflowing with hope.
I left the theater after delightful conversation with the people sitting next to me–and that after I don’t know how many minutes of standing ovation and clapping. The band skipped forward after the cast left the stage and heartened us with their music, during which, I swear, the entire audience was clapping and bouncing on their heels.
Come from away. And stay.
Borrow all the neighborhood grills without asking, and nobody will stop you. Instead, they might offer you a cuppa.
Say your prayers in a private room provided so you won’t feel stared at.
Drink all the host’s Irish whisky.
Stop the bus strike to provide what people need: love, care and a place to sleep.
Come from Away touches on the thoughts we had in the days following 9/11, even though most of us were not in the Twin Towers nor on a plane. What can I do to help ease this misery? My husband could have been on that plane! Who am I now that everything is different?
The musical highlights amazing true stories of individual people whose lives were brought together because of those days of fear, and leaves you both longing for and willing to take the steps to forge those kinds of relationships again.
The compassion and kindness of the people of Gander, Newfoundland still lives in us. If we want, we can go back there.
Of the many gifts God’s given, one is the pouring forth of joy because of those good gifts.
I haven’t heard a song lately that contains both the traditional content and doxological refrain of a hymn with music to move it forward and speak to many hearts.
I hope this gives you strength, too. Here’s to all the saints of all the ages, together praising.
I’m on a cliff top, looking out over an immense precipice, the bottom of which cannot be seen. Clouds obscure my vision. There’s no way to know how far I will fall, or what will meet me as I fall.
All my life in the faith, 38 years now, I’ve heard people describe the way that God came through for them, and how suffering with no apparent purpose had ultimately been used to prepare them for challenges in the future.
Right, I thought. That sounds nice and all. But I never saw it.
When I was in major depression for two and a half years, with brief respites only due to mild upward mood swings, there was no understanding of bigger purposes. There were no bigger themes and there wasn’t hope that my landscape would change.
Then it changed. When I thought I was alone, I could not have been more wrong.
Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way through the wilderness and rivers in the desert. Isaiah 43:19
What I needed for 2021 was contained in the seeds of the darkness of 2018, 2019 and 2020. In the struggle, in the wisdom given to me in those years, was the resurrection that gives strength now.
Joy in the Journey 