YESTERDAY MORNING

(Part 5 of A Bemoan, written on December 25)

(We find our protagonist at the concert, seated onstage in the dead center of the front row of the choir, facing a capacity audience at Carnegie Hall).

About halfway through the performance, Keith invited the audience to stand and join us as we sang “Silent Night, Holy Night.” By then, although I had gained a greater appreciation for the auditorium’s acoustics, when everyone — choir, featured vocalists, and audience — began singing, I seemed to be transported.

The impressions that hit me were so instantaneous that it takes much longer to attempt to describe them than it did for them to take place; and so dynamic — I am still reeling — that it would seem vain to attempt a description…but I’ll try, anyway. (But please bear with me. Describing the phenomena is genuinely beyond my capability!)

Like gifts of the Magi, there were three: the first occurred about halfway through the first verse. I had a sudden awareness, an overpowering sense of Something Else. The whole environment gave me the feeling of being inside a sphere of sound, but nothing hollow or flimsy. Instead, it was more substantial than diamond, yet as malleable as ripples on top of ocean waves; with harmonies and sounds chasing and embracing each other like iridescent colors on a soap bubble; somehow ethereal and unfixed, yet as permanent and unmovable as eternity. It seemed both separate from the music and the very substance of it, existing all on its own; larger and more potent than the combination of all our voices and instruments; a living, loving, powerful Presence.

It was bewildering. This had to be an effect of the acoustics, right? It couldn’t be the song. I mean, there is no telling how many times I’ve sung “Silent Night” and I have NEVER experienced such an astounding sensation. I found myself violating the number one rule of choirs — never take your eyes off the conductor — in order to glance around to see if I could determine and understand what was happening.

While scanning the audience, a second impression bowled me over as we started the second verse: “Silent night, holy night, shepherds quake at the sight…” I was struck by the number of people who were looking down on us from two, three, even four stories above; people standing shoulder to shoulder, singing this glorious celestial lullaby; and, in an instant, I was staggered by an idea that almost robbed me of my voice: “And, suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God…”

For a mere fragment of a split-second, time evaporated; and, gazing at those so high over us, I pictured myself sitting in a field with a few shepherd-variety mates and a bunch of sheep, and suddenly… THAT! That crowd and more, towering and soaring above, loudly praising God with a sound so intensely real and palpable that, certainly, it could have been physically touched by merely extending one’s hand.

This moment was, for me, an astonishing and curiously odd foretaste of the praises of heaven; far beyond anything within the grasp of my weak imagination, and incomprehensibly full of life. In that same fragment of a split-second, a third idea overpowered me so completely, so thoroughly, that it both took my breath away and stole my voice, and I wanted to stay right there forever and ever and ever and ever: “The Lord inhabits the praise of His people.”

Surely, it was impossible for this to be merely an emotional reaction from an admittedly peculiar character; it was too immense. Besides, I adamantly deny that I possess either the inventiveness or capability to generate such self-forgetful, soul-satiating euphoria and wonder as contained in that one intolerably brief, unbearably eternal, moment.

Surely the Lord was there with us: Inhabiting. Dwelling. Living.

“Immanuel.”

God.

With.

Us.

God…as I observe this season of Advent, please assure me it was, truly, You.

Yesterday, December 20, 2017, started rotten…but, oh, how gloriously it ended!

God with us.

Merry Christmas, indeed!