All through this last Sunday of Advent, CBC Radio has been filling my home with music. The music has come live from Oslo, Prague, London, Helsinki, Austria and Germany. Though Peter Tagny has been there all day offering translation of the commentary, much of the music has been sung in languages I cannot understand. Yet the emotion and something deeper, more primal, is as clear as winter air. The music expresses the longing of our human hearts for hope in this time of darkness, for love, for assurance that life holds beauty and grace. As I listened, I thought of Iceland, bankrupt. London, freezing. Yet the music continues. Yesterday, I heard John Komura Parker speak of playing Beethoven's "Emperor" in Sarajevo, in the 1990's. An old woman approached him afterwards to say, "While I listened, I forgot about the war. "
Advent prepares us for Christmas by helping us to remember. The longings of our heart are not in vain. There is love, and reason to hope. As Yvone Gebara has written: Jesus comes from here: from this earth, this body, this flesh, from the evolutionary process that is present both yesterday and today in the Sacred Body within which love resides. It continues in him beyond that, and is turned into passion for life, into mercy and justice.
May your Christmas be joyful and may your hopes be great. May you embody in your life the love we long for, and know yourself to be held in a love deeper than even music can express.
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