Wonderful sacrament

That animals should see.

O magnum mysterium
Et admirabile sacramentum
Ut animalia viderent Dominum natum
Jacentem in praesepio!
Beata Virgo, cujus viscera
Meruerunt portare
Dominum Christum
Alleluia

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So I went to a big college Christmas concert tonight.

I grew up in the shadow of St. Olaf College, which I’ve probably mentioned since it continues to be like 10% of my personality. Even people who think my hometown is actually called St. Olaf (it is not, it is called Northfield, after Mr. John North, not after the direction North, we would never claim an entire direction, how presumptuous) and that Rose Nylund is actually from there (OK WE KNOW Rose Nylund is not real but on the DL we would like to claim her anyway) - even these people tend to know about the St. Olaf Christmas specials.

These are televised extravaganzas that max out the resources of St. Olaf’s music programs every year. The results are beautiful and nostalgic, usually quite relentlessly white (the “world music” offerings only tend to emphasize this), and musically impressive. The student population is well trained, and a ton of work goes into the productions, from music to logistics.

I sit in the audience of tonight’s program like (a) Sybil.

Several versions of myself are sharing my ticket:

• The Minnesota Lutheran girl who is saved by grace alone. She knows the alto part to the F. Melius Christiansen arrangement of “Beautiful Savior” by heart.

• The feminist. She wants to know why the women’s choir can’t have the energetic “international” number with the guitars, percussion, choreography, and questionable diction.

• The theater veteran. She knows her way around an emotional crescendo. She is the same as the former church musician. Seriously. They are the same person.

• The cynical crone. She would like to check Magnum mysterium’s ID.

---

O great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the newborn Lord,
lying in a manger!
Blessed is the virgin whose womb
was worthy to bear
the Lord, Jesus Christ.
Alleluia!

---

I spent part of today following a thread about the climate change protest that disrupted a performance at the Metropolitan Opera last night. In the middle of the opening night of Tannhäuser, right when the singers portraying singers at a song contest are singing about a polluted spring (really, this is opera), some folks in the balcony boxes unfurled banners that said NO OPERA ON A DEAD PLANET and shouted a number of things before they were escorted away.

I worked at the Met for about ten years. It’s been a minute, but I still know a lot of the people who were performing last night. And I know how hard Tannhäuser is, and how much work all of those people did, singers, orchestra, stage crew. Watching the college Christmas show go off without a hitch tonight - so simple in comparison to any Wagner opera anywhere - I’m thinking about the frustration and sorrow that the Met performers and professionals must have felt, the intrusion on their work and the marring of their trajectory. I feel that, in my blood and bones. It takes so much to do a show: physical and mental commitment, memory, will, guts, expertise. To have a result compromised because of some element you can’t control or mitigate is maddening.

I can also well appreciate how frightening a protest is within any public space, indoors or outdoors. Our daily life can be scary. This is not just a footnote.

Even so, to read, comment, and engage with the ensuing discussion was to encounter something I didn’t expect.

Friends and colleagues decried the action, mocking it, calling it ineffective. Protest is fine, they said, but not this protest, not in this place. It should have been different, it should have been elsewhere. Climate change is terrible yes, but what does that have to do with the opera?

The protest shows no respect for the ticket holders. People paid to see Tannhäuser. How dare these protesters stand in their way?

---

The choir begins the Lauridsen O magnum mysterium.

I have loved this composition for years.

Up there on stage I see my entire cast (almost) for the upcoming spring opera. I see non-opera students who will begin student teaching in the spring. I see a young man who will keep singing as he enters law school in the fall.

I know what they sound like alone in my studio, or in opera rehearsal. I’ve heard how they hone their individual sound, embracing opulence, leading without apology. I hear them when we work on song recital, leaning into individual expression.

Tonight, they sound as one. But these voices are not guaranteed to blend. They wouldn’t, had they not the will, or were their individual qualities not welcomed into the whole.

I know how tired they are, how much rehearsal a concert like this demands. I also see their faces shine as they sing.

O great mystery.

---

What struck me about the opera threads was the assumption - widely held, it would seem - that the opera theater should be a space apart, untouched by the schmutz of the world.

Some friends opined that art alone elevates the theater above the spaces of the masses. Sure, climate change is worth protest, but this is not the time or the place; we are doing an art, thank you very much.

Others tied it more directly to money - people bought a ticket, so they should get to have the nice, polite performance they paid for.

No one seemed impressed by the protesters doing something theatrical… in a theater.

I try to reconcile this with several years worth of people talking about relevance.

I think about the assertion, heard throughout my life, that protesters are doing it wrong:

I support equality, but destroying property just damages their cause.

I support equal rights, but strident women won’t win any allies.

I support the gays, but why do they have to throw it in people’s faces?

Protest is fine, people seemed to be saying, if it disturbs the people who need disturbing. But that can’t possibly be me.

---

The text that breaks my heart open is ut animalia viderunt Dominum.

That animals should see the Lord.

Whoever wrote these words is saying:

What a miracle.

When the divine made contact with our world, it was in such humble surroundings.

Can you believe it - the first beings to encounter the divine were animals.

Animals. Can you believe it?

And then the text praises the very body of the woman who bore Christ into the world.

What is this radical song?

---

I looked at those shining faces. We’ve made so much music together. I know about their jobs and their loves, their car troubles and their favorite coffee joints.

Here as in so many other places I’ve lived, I’ve had the unbelievable privilege of joining a community, of seeing the few things that are different from other places alongside the many things that are profoundly the same.

It all landed in my heart tonight as I watched these dear, known faces in concentration, breathing together, sounding beautifully tuned chords. What lies ahead for them?

My fears about that future were laid bare.

I wept.

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O great mystery, that when the divine appears, it is to mere animals.

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If you have never heard Morten Lauridsen’s setting of this verse, here ya go. From St. Olaf and everything.

Wishing you all miracles in the coming days.