I'd make the "Lemon, it's only Monday" joke but.....woof, this was a bad weekend for scary violent things - a campus shooting, a shooting pretty clearly motivated by antisemitism that killed a LOT of people, and the tragedy with Rob Reiner and his wife (and his son; however that man went wrong, that's a tragedy too)
I find myself thinking a lot this time of year about things.
First of all, this: I know people mocked it at the time it came out, and still mock it today, but I think it has a point ("7 o'clock news/Silent Night" by Simon and Garfunkel)
Every year I think about what news stories would be subbed in for an update of this.
Every year there are enough upsetting/unfortunate ones for a song at least twice as long.
People don't change. I mean, I get it, if you read at ALL, even just the Epistles in the Bible, you realize that humans are much the same as we were 2000 years ago.
And second - a lot of things in Advent hit hard this year.
I was particularly thinking how powerful the story of Christ coming to Earth is now - here is a being of infinite power, as the Gospel of John says, "The Word who was with God, and who was God" and was there at the very beginning of everything, choosing to give up that power out of love of humanity....And that's just... if you're a believer at all, it should catch you up short, especially when you see humans with far less power just abusing it, and sometimes it seems abusing it out of the chance to be cruel to another living being, not even for any profit to them. And it breaks a person's heart. Or at least it does mine.
And the Coventry Carol ("lullu lullay, my tiny little child" which was about the Massacre of the Innocents by Herod) always makes me sad in the best years, but this year.......yeah.
The holiday channel I had been playing in my car had this John Denver version (which I had never heard before) on one day and I found myself tearing up a bit as I drove.
This year has been a lot. Not just in the outside world; a lot in the sense of spending a semester "in exile" from my usual teaching building, and having to trek all over campus to teach, and the added mental burden of having to carry all my lab stuff with me, and having to make sure everything I might need from my office was in my backpack. And serving on a never-ending search committee.
And worrying about things at church - never enough money for everything to be right, and struggling to keep the pulpit filled, and it does feel like we're keeping it together with duct tape and baling wire a lot of the time.
And my knee still bothering me - it will never be fully right again and I'm not even sure submitting to surgery and the concomitant recovery time would make a sufficient improvement, and I never seem to be able to make time often enough to do the PT stretching to keep it from hurting, and shoes are a perpetual problem - they can't be too stiff nor too loose, they need enough padding without being too heavy, and they wear out too fast when I do find a pair that works,.
And I am just tired. I find I have less stamina for a lot of the things than I once did (I am sure the periodic flares of chronic pain from the knee do that).
But maybe a little happier, or if not happier, more peaceful, John Denver song, from his Christmas album with the Muppets. This is actually based on a British poem, and portrays the quiet, peaceful country life that the poet once had:
(and an aside: I remember we had this - on record, a vinyl record - when I was a kid. I loved it. And then when I was in college, and we found it in the dorm library (yes, the dorms there had their own tiny libraries!) some of the other girls mocked it. And I just kept my mouth shut; I had been taught too much that the things I loved were, as they say now "cringe," and I didn't have the energy for it then. And then some years later, in grad school, a little older, with a different group of friends, someone brought it up. And almost to a person everyone was: "oh I LOVED that record! it was so much fun and John Denver was so good on it." And I don't know if it was a maturity thing - people growing out of that adolescent need to mock and be "so over" everything, or if it was simply a different group of people, but it struck me. I have it on CD now, and I still love it; I never stopped loving it, because it brings up happy childhood memories)
For what it's worth, here's the original poem, the lyrics are shortened and rearranged:
Noel: Christmas Eve 1913
Pax hominibus bonae voluntatis
A frosty Christmas Eve
when the stars were shining
Fared I forth alone
where westward falls the hill,
And from many a village
in the water'd valley
Distant music reach'd me
peals of bells aringing:
The constellated sounds
ran sprinkling on earth's floor
As the dark vault above
with stars was spangled o'er.
Then sped my thoughts to keep
that first Christmas of all
When the shepherds watching
by their folds ere the dawn
Heard music in the fields
and marveling could not tell
Whether it were angels
or the bright stars singing.
Now blessed be the tow'rs
that crown England so fair
That stand up strong in prayer
unto God for our souls
Blessed be their founders
(said I) an' our country folk
Who are ringing for Christ
in the belfries to-night
With arms lifted to clutch
the rattling ropes that race
Into the dark above
and the mad romping din.
But to me heard afar
it was starry music
Angels' song, comforting
as the comfort of Christ
When he spake tenderly
to his sorrowful flock:
The old words came to me
by the riches of time
Mellow'd and transfigured
as I stood on the hill
Heark'ning in the aspect
of th' eternal silence.
And yes: Pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.
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