My favorite Christmas carols are sad and eerie. Haunting and impossible to get out of your mind.
Once again, as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Will be near to us once more
Someday soon we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow.
Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother,
And in His name,
ALL
oppression shall cease
Last week my choir was rehearsing what is normally known as the Coventry Carol. I had forgotten it’s history. It used to be my job to know music history tidbits..and I’ve been missing academia so I looked it up.
Wikipedia had the below to share:
The play depicts the Christmas story from chapter two in the Gospel of Matthew: the carol itself refers to the Massacre of the Innocents, in which Herod ordered all male infants under the age of two in Bethlehem to be killed, and takes the form of a lullaby sung by mothers of the doomed children.
My blood ran cold.
I truly don’t know how my soul or anyone else’s on earth right now can be going about business as usual. Can we ever find the light again that is promised to us through the winter solstice? How can we?
I watch our world burn from a nation complicit with the greediest horrors humanity is capable of creating. Each day, silent screams hurtle through my windpipe like tiny insects as I bear witness to doomed mothers, lovers, teachers, medics, children all over the world to thoughtless massacre.
do not look away.
cannot relent
chains shall we break….
Are you paying attention?
Lully, lullah, thou little tiny child,
Bye bye, lully, lullay.
Thou little tiny child,
Bye bye, lully, lullay.
O sisters too, how may we do
For to preserve this day
This pore yongling for whom we do singe
By by, lully, lullay?
Herod, the king, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day
His men of might in his own sight
All yonge children to slay,—
That woe is me, poor child, for thee,
And ever morne and may
For thy parting nether say nor sing,
By by, lully, lullay.
Ceasefire Now
Ceasefire Now
Ceasefire Now
Ceasefire Now
Ceasefire Now
CEASEFIRE NOW.
Jesus was described as a man of sorrows, intimately acquainted with our grief. Now more than ever we are aware of the deep grief and cruelty in our world. Those who are holy aren’t those who are perfect or removed from the ugly and painful experiences of life. It is the souls who choose to work for peace for all humankind.
We are no strangers to grief, but practice the work of finding connection and the sacred in the smallest ways. Those slivers of joy we alchemize as fuel to meet others in kind. No two of us are alike our gifts and passions vary, but our vision is the same..to be responsible for calling in the light back to a broken world.
It is not just my calling, but yours too. Hold on to each other. Do not stay quiet. Count every glimpse of holiness you encounter. There is more to find. The days are slowly growing brighter…do not forget.
You have all you need to survive the winter.