The title of this song — “Easier Said Than Done” — brings to mind conflicting feelings. On the one hand, the phrase can feel like a cop-out, an escape clause, an excuse to give up. On the other hand, there is something oddly affirming and normalizing about it. Embarking on something difficult, I often don’t give myself permission to acknowledge the difficulty. But the difficult things we strive for — in the case of this song, “sounds of emotion spreading all o’er the world bringing peace for a moment” — are often more manageable when we name the difficultly.
Imagining the heavenly realm — or the wisdom and truth that we can glimpse in this realm — consoles me for a bit. But then I seem to get pulled back into the “easier said than done,” teetering back and forth from hope to despair.
While working at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, there was one year when Ellen Stewart had us doing seven Greek plays in repertory. It was an epic project and required a marathon stamina. Our physical trainer, Michael Brody, gave us a mantra to come back to again and again: “You can never be balanced but you can always be balancing.” I have shared this phrase with countless numbers of my students since then. It has become a personal reminder to me when I am balancing between recognizing the difficulty of my task at hand with the all-too-common fear of failure that leads to giving up.
What attracts me to this song as a celebration of Christmas is the turn of phrase that happens in the middle of it. All the things we strive for spiritually — peace, wisdom, truth — are “already said and done” in the Incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Christ. The kingdom that this song imagines is already given to us. It is a gift, given freely.
What I am always balancing in Advent is what the church calls “the already and the not yet.” The kingdom of God is already established by Christ’s gift to us, but it is not yet completed until the fullness of time. Striving to hold on the vision of “the already” and trying to commit to the long haul of slogging through “the not yet,” Christmas and Christ’s loving gift reminds me “it’s all possible: It’s already said and done.”
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