Adventage

There is a certain disconnect between working in a mall and singing in a church choir in this season.  At work an echoing cycle of really awful versions of really awful songs melds into the background noise of shoppers.  In that whirling white noise, I straighten shelves and greet customers and ask them if I can help them find anything.  I explain why we can't mail beer.  I print up tags for the incoming shipments.  I refold the t-shirts and replenish the birthday angels. I ask "Is that credit or debit?  Do you want the receipt in your hand or in the bag?  Shall I remove the price tags for you?"  Then something pierces through and once again I hear Jose wishing me a Feliz Navidad, and the piano begins its Musak rendition of a familiar, banal, and bafflingly nameless tune.  I ask everyone, "What IS that?" but they don't know.  My co-worker sings along with Frank.  And I remember my college music professor, whose goal was to make it impossible for us to treat music as a background thing.

Still, two days ago, I was singing for the second Sunday in Advent.  My throat has been hosting an asthmatic cough for weeks, so I have missed many rehearsals and am scrambling to get the music in my ears and voice.  I sat out in the pews for last Monday's rehearsal and hummed along with the other two second altos who were valiantly holding down that luscious low line.  You couldn't call it marking, because I wasn't producing even half voice.  But, I promised to know the music and have a voice on Sunday, and they let me.

On Saturday, E wrote out some pronunciation for the French piece, and it all started clicking.  We were singing Chanticleer's version of "Noel Nouvelet," staccato followed by legato, a medieval chanson, a joyously melancholy minor tune.  I missed the timbrel that I recalled from a long ago PBS radio program, taped with my first good stereo system back when I lived in the milk barn.  But it was so much fun to be singing it myself.

We were singing in mixed position, which means I was surrounded by the other parts and had to know my own part very well.  I stood at the end of the row, looking across the choir as the men started their plainsong chant of "O Come O Come Emmanuel."  Then, deepening into rich polyphony:  "Rejoice!"  And back into the medieval sound of melody in fourths.  I could see the wreaths hanging on the surrounding balconies, I could smell the fir and juniper.  I missed the advent calendar, the ritual of adding a candle each Sunday, each one a little taller than its predecessor.  But the chalice flame flickered as the familiar and beloved hymn soared over the congregation.  And I was happy.

Our minister talked about prayer and Advent's past as a time of penitence and atonement.  Although I'm aware of the religious history, I've never felt that way.  Our culture has long since lost that ancient connection with the cycles, the dread that maybe the light won't come back.  Some of us celebrate solstice with candles and celebratory drinks, but there is no propitiation to it.  We may be depressed by the dark and the cold, but we don't take responsibility for it.  And I for one see this as a season of unmitigated joys, some ritualized, some new.  I like to decorate my home with old ornaments and new greens.  I love the smells of fir and cinnamon and cloves.  I like to make origami ornaments and Christmas cards, to think about my past year and try to make a coherent narrative of it in the annual Christmas letter.  I love making spritzbakkelse and lefse, scattering flour about and consuming pounds of butter and sugar.  Today I made my first batches of fudge and toffee, and I put together a mix for D's Advent basket of presents:  when he opens it I'll make the Russian tea cakes which are his favorite holiday cookie.

Above all, I love the light and music and love that fill the air and heart.  I sat in the choir loft, feeling the handbells' chimes resonating in my skull as they rang in my ears. I realized afresh how viscerally music is a part of us.  It is not background, even though our mall culture relegates it to that place.   Likewise, spirituality is not beside the point during these weeks.  I may not be practicing my music, my mediation, or my tai chi.  I may not be atoning for my sins and petitioning for the return of the light or the birth of the Savior.  I may not even be "raging against the dying of the light." But I am rejoicing in what this season brings to me and mine.

So about that disconnect I mentioned at the beginning of this post.....B sent suggestions to get me through my temporary work at the mall.  (Drink water, take your breaks, eat your meals, recognize that people will be unreasonable, use your imagination.)  She said, "don't let retail spoil what you love about this season."  I won't.