As a child of Chicken Creek, some things seemed out of reach when I was young. I was an only child and spent plenty of time alone. That’s not a sad statement, it was in solitude that I was able to cultivate an imagination and develop the ability to self soothe and be content in silence. Movies, books, video games, and television programs became a playground of sorts and in the amusement park of my mind I would encounter fascinating people and places that seemed so far from Pulaski. Somewhere in those years I became fascinated by the symphony. I’ve never been musical, but I have always been a lover of music. When I was sixteen three of my great loves converged and created within me a new fascination. As I mentioned, I loved movies, and I loved music, and I loved books, and one of my favorite books was Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” In the fall of that year a movie version was released and I was all in. I saw the movie, multiple times, had the movie poster on my bedroom wall, and even bought the soundtrack. The soundtrack to the movie was all classical music, and this was probably the first time I’d ever listened to classical music. Around that time I started wanting to go to a symphony and hear classical music performed live. I can’t say why for certain, but I think it was because I believed that going to symphonies made you classy and dignified, two words that weren’t thrown around much in my circle of influence. Still, I really wanted to go to a symphony. As an adult, I often found myself traveling long distances, alone, at night. Most nights I would spend some of that time listening to classical music on public radio. The first piece of classical music to truly resonate with me was Mussorgsky’s “Pictures At An Exhibition.” It was also the first classical CD I purchased, intentionally. When I bought the Dracula soundtrack at sixteen I didn’t know it was going to be orchestral music only — just another of life’s happy, fortunate accidents.
As my fascination with classical music began to grow, I encountered a symphony that spoke to me like no other, Handel’s “Messiah.” It was written nearly three hundred years ago, and it tells a story that is nearly three thousand years old. The symphony tells the story of Israel’s coming Messiah from the pages of the prophet Isaiah. Today, after decades of hoping, wanting, waiting, wishing, dreaming, I attended my first symphony, “Messiah” at the Schermerhorn in downtown Nashville. Sometimes in life, things we wait for fail to deliver and we are left crestfallen and disappointed, but this was not one of those days. It was everything I imagined and more. When my son later asked me what I thought of it, I told him it was painfully beautiful. The musicians, the vocalists, the conductor, the chorus were awe inspiringly talented performers. So many times I had to wipe away the tears streaming down my face, sometimes from the beauty of the performance and the message and sometimes from the pain of the story. Majesty and misery simultaneously. The morning began with a beautiful worship service and the symphony, at least for me, became another one. Today will be one of the days that I remember as one of the best days. A day when reality lived up to the hype. The cherry on top was getting to experience it all with the love of my life. Everything is better when shared — pain, pleasure, beauty, everything, except Oreo Cheesecake, that is best enjoyed alone.
This isn’t one of those humble brag things where I have an ulterior motive of wanting you to be ever so slightly envious of the life I’m living or validate my insecurities with comments like “That’s so amazing!” or “You’re so lucky.” Even if it was a humble brag it wouldn’t be very good one. Most people I know experience zero FOMO about me going to the symphony — we literally couldn’t give away our two extra tickets. I’m sharing this to call our attention to a woefully overlooked and undervalued part of life that I want to share with everyone: perspective.
Today I have a couple of different perspectives that help me to see this Christmas season for what it is, a magical, undeserved, but greatly appreciated, gift. Perspective number one is all about Christmas past and Christmas present. This morning I thought about the Christmases we spent at the jail, just to see our incarcerated loved ones on a video monitor. We could have done the same thing with our phones, but going to the physical jail, knowing they were on the other side of the walls, brought the smallest degree of comfort that can come from being so close, though mingled with the pain of feeling so far. The only place sadder than a jail at Christmas is a cemetery at Christmas, and we’ve been there too. Though painful, these are the places that provide perspective. Somehow the lights twinkle a little bit brighter, the music is a little more joyous and the fellowship a little more comforting when viewed from that perspective today.
The first perspective is all about a humble and lamentable disposition, but this second one is a bit more literal. In the last twenty-four hours I’ve gotten to spend time with both of my grandchildren. Both of them stacked together are less than five feet tall, so you really have to get down on their level to enjoy them. With Rougaroux that means sitting in the floor, no matter how painful it is on your hips and back and no matter hard it is to get back up again. Christmas is beautiful from his level because everything is a joy, well almost everything. The word “no” in any capacity is not a joy for this little boy on the cusp of two. From his perspective Christmas is a bit weird, but a good weird. Suddenly there is a giant tree, filled with decorations, lights and gifts in the middle of his living room, but he isn’t supposed to touch it. If you’re wondering how enthusiastic he is about the “look but don’t touch” policy, let me share two little details with you. 1) For awhile, when he would walk by a tree and spot a ball shaped ornament around eye level, he would swing his right hand like a baseball bat and launch the ornament across the house. 2) All of the ornaments within reach are now held onto the branches with a rubber band. True story. Besides the tree in the midst of his living room, ornately decorated with irresistible forbidden fruit, there is the random appearance of his beloved Gumbo, adorned in a Santa Claus suit, bearing gifts that can be as enthralling as a truck or as pedestrian as a shirt. Despite the bizarre and confusing rituals, and the occasional “no”, he seems to love the holiday as a whole.
And then there is Nola. This little lady doesn’t think much about anything yet. Her timeline consists of only about two hours. Eat, changed, sleep, repeat. In the rare moments where she is wide eyed and observing this new universe, she mostly wrinkles her forehead, seemingly perplexed by the things she encounters, though occasionally entertained by things like ceiling fans and Christmas lights. Our time together is much more subdued than my time with Rougaroux, and less dangerous since there are no flying objects. My day in Nashville was such a joy, such a blessing, so much fun, and the fulfillment of decades of desire, but from the perspective of Sunday morning at about 5:30 am, it was the second best thing I did today. The best part of the day was sitting and drinking coffee, watching Nola sleep, with seasonal worship music playing in the background, a fireplace in the foreground, and a beautifully illuminated Christmas tree as the centerpiece. All the pomp and circumstance of the symphony was merely the pretty paper in which this priceless and fleeting gift was wrapped.
Perspective is a priceless gift because it has the ability to make all the gifts in our lives priceless, whether great or small, common or rare. To borrow from Handel, "Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Halle-lujah!" That’s best I can say it, but it pales in comparison to the poetic way Beth Moore expresses it, so I’ll give her the last word. “Tears fill my eyes often these days and as often over awe and gladness as sadness. The gifts to be had here — stubborn beauties among thorns — grow sacred with age.”
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