Just as we swaddle the God of the universe and set him a manger this time each year, we can pull 16 syllables out of a single vowel while singing all about it. Advent is full of miracles.
When I was young, church registered as a bore. I passed the time with pencil in hand, lining out letters and words in the printed bulletin to make new absurdist comedy of the church announcements.
The season of Advent, however, seemed to cut through child-sized boredom. We kids had an Advent metaphor we could reckon with — the anticipation of wrapped gifts. Perhaps that’s the power of the promise. Whatever kind of goodness can fit under a family tree, it never really holds a candle to the prosody of the prophets, shepherds aghast, the mysterious promise of new life flowing out of a humble stable. Likewise, we the faithful, together in one accord and united in melody, belting out that shepherd’s report like it was brand new all over again. Something was in the air — angels.
Angels we have heard on high
Sweetly singing o’er the plains
And the mountains in reply
Echoing their joyous strains
But this was only the buildup. What miracles we vicarious shepherds had heard coming from the sky has prompted the mountains to echo back and so we echoed back as well, like we had been waiting 10,000 years for just such a communal galactic exhale:
Glo-O-o-o-o-O-O-o-o-o-O-O-o-o-o-Oria
in excelsis Deo
Electricity.
No refrain in the history of music is more like a sled careening down a steep hill of snow and ice. The melody — 16 notes dedicated to the letter “o” fluidly sustained through the rising and falling melismatic melodic sequence — doesn’t merely race to the resolve, it pulses with life the whole way down.
We congregants, cosplaying shepherds cosplaying angels, had let go of words, and joy itself became unintelligible, nearer to absurdist comedy than theological declarations. You could see it on every face. Sure, we started in English, but things turned so downright operatic that we ended up in Latin. “In excelsis deo” always sounded more like “In Aunt Chelsea’s stable” or “In eggshells a day old” than “Glory to God in the highest,” but that only enriched the mystery of the revelation.
The promise of Advent is a family affair — the ushering in of kingdom where we are declared sons and daughters and joy is ever before us. The melody of it has come! First to our lungs, and then our vocal cords, and where it might go next is anybody’s guess.
Click here to listen to the song. | Click here to find our Advent playlist. | Click here to find more Advent reflections.
