Light in Darkness, Let Us Sing!

Joel Cohen, Musical Director Emeritus of the marvelous early music ensemble, Boston Camarata, writes of their Renaissance Christmas program:

"In fact, the most astonishing juxtapositions of seriousness and wit, of spirituality and jest, run through this Renaissance Christmas reportoire. All the animals of the barnyard seem to make their appearance at some point of other: cocks, cuckoos, owls and wolves participate in our musical celebration......And in the Magnificant of  Galliculus ("Little Rooster"!) the different modes of experiencing Christmas are made to run together: solemn Gregorian chants, learned Flemish-style polyphony, and a riotous collection of Christmas carols, animal noises, sound effects and nonsense syllables manage happily to co-exist: Finnegan's Wake in a Renaissance Chapel.

At Christmas contradictions are overcome; we learn to reconcile the different aspects of our own being. Our humblest and noblest parts move together toward the Truth that lies beyond us, yet which, at moments, does come near."

I've always felt that Christmas is a greater mystery than even theologians give it credit. There is some kind of Dark Night of the Soul beauty about it, a numinous to it, as if in deep December we encounter the thinnest of the thin places. And that's a quality shared among the December holidays. Just as we herald and summon the slow return of longer days, we marvel, too, that in richest darkness, the colored lights twinkle brightest.

Slaughter of the Holy Innocents

Massacre of the Innocents by Alexey Pismenny

A poem of grief for

Charlotte

Daniel

Olivia

Josephine

Ana

Dylan

Madeleine

Catherine

Chase

Jesse

James

Grace

Emilie

Jack

Noah

Caroline

Jessica

Avielle

Benjamin

Allison

 

King Herod was a bad man. And Herod had his henchmen.

Henchmen do the bad deeds powerful men don’t want to actually do themselves.

Herod sent them to kill all the children in Bethlehem, where Jesus had been born.

Herod was afraid of Jesus, even though he was just a child.

A child can be powerful, even threatening, to some grown-ups.

So Herod had them all killed.

His henchmen didn’t use guns. There were no guns then.

But they may have used knives, slicing the children in pieces or stabbing them.

Their parents must have had to watch.

I imagine some of them killed themselves afterwards.

But probably most didn’t, especially if they had older children.

They had to keep on living.

There is a day in December, right between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

It’s a day called Holy Innocents Day and some church people remember it.

But most people ignore the day. We don't even know the children's names.

We don't even know how many were killed.

Probably fifteen, maybe twenty, like in Newtown.

Bethlehem was a small town. Still, twenty is a lot of children to kill.

Herod had his henchmen. Here, in this world, we have guns.

And you are the Holy Innocents slaughtered by them.

A Sestina for Santa Lucia

St. Lucy by Domenico de Pace Beccafummi

On December 13th, St. Lucy's Day, in many Scandinavian countries and in Lutheran communities in the United States, young girls wearing crowns of candles and bearing plates of saffron buns--to represent St. Lucy's tortured eyes--come before their families to sing "Santa Lucia." Originally a Neapolitan sailor's song, the words to the Scandinavian versions plea for the return of light and for the release from winter's darkness. 

St. Lucy was a fourth-century martyr, condemned to die by fire. As she was dying, her throat was speared to keep her from speaking further. But the spearing was unsuccessful and her words continued.

A sestina is a thirty-line French poetic form of six sestets, ending in a three-line envoi. It's got six repeated words that end each line, following a strict order. It is a hypnotic form, suitable to the strange and mysterious martyr, St. Lucy.

A Sestina for Santa Lucia

Sing of Santa Lucia, envoy of light,

bearing into the solstice her halo

of flame, white-robed and dark-eyed.

Sing of Santa Lucia, martyred by fire,

speared through the throat to silence her speaking.

Listen! What does love call us to hear?

What is in the music we hear?

We sing, but somehow it’s the martyr’s words that plea for light.

We hear promise in the prayer she is speaking.

Lilting, though plaintive, in lands darkness swallows

she moves among us, a corona of fire,

and sings with a luminous glow in her eyes.

Santa Lucia, with visionary eyes,

called forth from her pyre words few could hear.

The flames leapt at her, the flames of the fire,

upon which she stood martyred and blinded by light.

We imagine her words, more prayer than echo,

and wonder at the meaning of the words she is speaking.

But what are the words she is speaking?

O timeless legend with fire-blinded eyes,

a Nordic spirit with flaming tallows

atop her head singing that we might hear,

she summons from darkness the return of light,

she who was martyred in the brightness of fire.

The one who died from it summons the fire.

But it is not of death she is speaking,

nor is she frightened by the brightness of light.

Though dying, what was left for her eyes

To see, what beyond the fire’s roar could she hear?

Now she is the visionary, fire-hallowed.

In the dark morning, the young girls follow

one after another and stand by the parlor fire

singing “Santa Lucia” for the family to hear--

not the same words Santa Lucia was speaking,

but we see the same plaintive look in their eyes:

Let not the darkness be more final than the light.

In darkness Santa Lucia’s luminous echo is speaking--

the refining fire lent vision to her dying eyes--

and in deep December we hear the saint’s sweet plea for light.

Advent - a grim story (it can't all be sweetness and light)

Alice Strange, Three Queens, Oban, Scotland

Advent

                       

Sam Schultz told Asa about the protesters--two of them, but each holding a hand-lettered sign: God Hates Fags. Jesus Cursed Queers. 

Really? thought Asa. But complete sentences. At least that.

Then he went out to talk to them.

“Look, you can’t bring hate signs onto this property. This is a church. We just had the Sunday School Christmas pageant. The kids don’t need to see this kind of crap.”

The bulky, barrel-chested protester said, “You got a fucking flamer as your minister here and you’re worried about a couple of signs? Your minister is a faggot. Did you know that?”

Asa stared at them.

“Yes, I know that. I’m the minister. And you need to get off this property right now.”

By this time some of the men—Sam Schultz, Mike Kiley and Asa’s partner, David—had come outside to see what was going on. Mike was still wearing his wife’s dress (the Three Kings had been Three Queens this year), hanging loosely on his lanky frame. He hadn’t yet had the chance to change.

“Mike, get back in here,” his wife called from church steps. He looked down at his hairy legs, up at the protesters and went back inside.

“What the fuck was that?” the other protester said as Mike walked away. “A tranny fag?”.

“Leave now,” Asa said forcefully, “Or I’ll call the state troopers.”

“Already did,” David said, holding up his cell phone.

The troopers took their time arriving. One of the men started yelling “God hates fags” over and over. By this time there was chaos in the Fellowship Hall. The little kids kept asking what was going on. Why were the police coming? What did the signs say? In between packing away Christmas pageant costumes and gathering up casserole dishes from the potluck supper, the mothers tried to come up with reasonable explanations that, at the same time, obscured what was going on.

But when nearly-deaf old Mrs. Fischer found out about the men picketing, she said in a voice that carried throughout the Hall, “’God hates fags’? What a despicable thing to say!”

One little boy demanded to know what ‘a fag’ was. He was only five. He’d know by fourth grade, at least, probably third.  

“Tell him it’s a cigarette,” the boy’s father whispered to his wife,  “That’s what they call them in Britain.”

“What? They call gay people ‘cigarettes’ in Britain? I never heard that.”

“No. Cigarettes. They call cigarettes ‘fags’ in Britain.”

“Mommy,” he asked again, “what’s ‘a fag’?”

“It’s a cigarette, Daddy says.”

“If they’re cigarettes, then what’s so bad about God hating them?”

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