From: Music As Prayer Advent and Christmas: ‘Tis the season of extra rehearsals, the season of getting ready for special concerts and services. When you are a church musician hauling music stands into the organ loft, trying to arrange them in a very cramped space, finding time to rehearse with a soloist, penciling cues into a musical score, and phoning a publisher to express-mail you some instrumental parts, you may begin to wonder: is it worth all this madness? It takes such immense amounts of time and energy. But when the moment of performance arrives, whether in a church or a school or a concert hall, there may be an epiphany: a manifestation of the divine, a disclosure of the spirit of a timeless musical work, a revelation that awakens wonder, a light that fills a shadowed soul, a sound that gives wings to a prayer, or a melody that traces the shape of the heart’s deepest yearning. Musical epiphanies lead me to consider anew the epiphany recorded in Matthew 2, the journey of the magi to find the Christ child. We usually think that their journey begins with the appearance of a new star, but their journey must have [...]
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