The signs have been there the last week – comments about Advent in the chapel at Drew, thoughts of finding my advent wreath, and even the first Sunday of Advent this snowy December morning. But nothing says “advent” to me quite like Advent Lessons and Carols, a service that poetically expresses some of humanity’s deepest longings – the longing for justice, for peace, for love, and for light. In a time of world strife, anger, poverty, and factionalism, only the deep poetic and musical religious traditions can bring me a sense that the promise of the Christ child is real.  

 

This year at St. Peter’s Church in Morristown, the Early Music Schola (of which I am a part) sang from the balcony and the girls’ choir sang from the front choir stalls. We interpolated the Gregorian “O” antiphons in chant with scripture readings and anthems and hymns. The balcony offers a spectacular view of the whole of the church yet at the same time feels just a bit removed. And perhaps that is a perfect image of my own feelings in surveying the girls’ choir at a distance.

 

For seventeen years I conducted that choir – recruited choristers, built it into a group of fifty girls ages eight to thirteen, who came together regularly to share in the making of music. Those girls gave me a precious gift – the gift of their love and trust – and I reciprocated. It has been over five years since I stepped down as director but the sound of unison girls’ voices has not lost its power to move me. Tonight I listened to a beautiful rendition of the opening solo of Simon Lindley’s Ave Maria. to the power and joy of Richard Gieseke’s Rejoice in the Lord Always, and several other beautiful pieces. Memories flooded through me – girls who sang that solo, eager singers and reluctant ones, attentive choristers and spacey ones, all but one of them young women now, dispersed in many places but still tied together from the comraderie of singing.

 

Ironically, it was the last anthem, a piece that I have never conducted, that brought to mind the one chorister who is no longer alive – Emily Failla. Emily died in July of 2006 in a rock climbing accident. She was 24 years old. And although I never taught her this song and as far as I know she never sang this song, the text and the music express her so beautifully that in some sense she taught me this song.

 

            Make me a light to lighten the world,

            Make me a star to lighten the darkness,

            Make me so bright with your living word,

            That I may shine with your love. (Philip Wilby. © Chester Music Ltd.)

 

Emily just let the light shine through her and all of us who knew her felt that love. And that is why it is still so hard to let her go.

 

To all of my choir daughters – each of you carries that spark of divinity within you. May you make the world a brighter place this Advent and always. And may you know that your presence in my life  - as eager little girls, as changing adolescents, and now as young adults – continues to bring me great joy. So stay in touch.