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| My grandchildren, Little Political Spheres 1 and 2, and the camels playing the wise men, for this year's Christmas card |
Every year for about 35 years I have made our Christmas
card, folded so I can print our letter on the back. I like getting people’s
Christmas letters, but I also like to have something to hang on the bannister
with the other cards. So, if other people feel that way, this was a solution to
that.
I always do something depicting part of the Christmas story:
the manger scene, the shepherds, the wise men, the angels. And I’ve used my
grandchildren in photos, sized to fit the front of the card, since the birth of our first granddaughter eleven years
ago. Fortunately, the kids are still cooperating. In fact, they are much easier
to wrangle at 11 and 8 than they were when they were littler.
This year we learned that a coworker of son Political Sphere had a ranch with a lot of animals. They raise emus and alpacas for profit, but they also have donkeys, dogs, dozens of cats—and two camels. So we arranged for a photo shoot. It’s a two-hour drive for me, and it was a rainy day, but we were running out of days, so we went on faith. The rain let up just enough late afternoon that we could quickly do the job. Much thanks to the good people who let us come there, and so willingly helped us out.
The large camel, Annie, was very well behaved and played her
part well. The younger camel, Drago, was a bit more challenging. We had to keep
trying different arrangements, including some photos without him. Then we
thought to bring him behind. His reins are being managed by the daughter of the
ranch family, ducking down behind our kids. And it turned out that the very
last photo I took in that arrangement was the one we used. Other than a bit of
color saturation and lighting focus, I didn’t have to do any photo editing.
So I’m sharing that for your Christmas enjoyment.
The Music
One other way I celebrate Christmas is with music. About a
decade and a half ago I had the opportunity to lead a choir that combined the
congregations in our stake (a geographical area) with a Catholic church located
across the street from our main building. That annual combined choir tradition
has been going on for something like 27 years now, ever since our building was
built and the Catholics invited us to join them. Sometime after my era they got
an extraordinary musician, Debbie Siebert, to lead our stake, and also a new
music director at the Catholic church, who have both been doing it for over a
decade now.
About five years ago, a new stake was created, which
separated us from that stake, and we’ve missed singing with the combined choir.
But this year, because of COVID-19, there had to be something other than the
traditional large choir meeting together. Debbie arranged to do a virtual choir
number. This took a huge amount of advance planning, and also a huge amount of
work for a video editor. But it also made it so she could invite some of us
alumni to participate.
Well ahead of Thanksgiving we were given the music, marked
with director’s notes, plus audio tracks of our part with accompaniment and all
parts with accompaniment (the two directors did all the voices for those
tracks). So we learned the music on our own, recorded ourselves singing it—we had
earphones to hear our track, so only our voice alone was recorded—and then we
sent that in for editing.
The song is an arrangement of “The First Noel,” one we’ve
done before, so not too difficult to learn. However, it has several sections
done in unison. That sounds easy—and maybe it is for higher voices, but for
lower voices it is often difficult.
I used to sing mezzo, even though I’ve always been a real
alto, but I had a very good range, because of training. In high school I didn’t
move from soprano to alto until my last semester, when I did the alto solo for
a mass we were performing. Singing, at least for me, with allergies and probably
just some physical limits to my instrument, is something of a physical workout,
especially for the higher notes. But it used to be that I sang frequently
enough, with choir or solo performances coming up enough that I kept myself in
shape. But we haven’t met for choir since last spring.
I found myself needing to cram my vocal conditioning for the
Christmas season into just a couple of weeks. Some days the vocal freedom would
allow me to do the high notes (which are not all that high), and other days I
got nothing. Or a screech. Too much tension. And all the years of training and
practice just didn’t seem to get me there. Besides the allergies and need for
daily training, it might just be age; there’s probably a good reason the Tabernacle
Choir retires singers at age 60.
We tried scheduling our time to record a full week ahead of
our deadline, but I couldn’t do it that day. I just got something that sounded
like laryngitis, even though I wasn’t sick. Sleep, food, exercise—everything makes
a difference, and I had done something wrong—or didn’t do something I needed
to. One day that final week, I did have a voice—but that didn’t coincide with
time Mr. Spherical Model could help record me. Then we were within two days of
our deadline, so I went ahead and tried. I had to just go silent on the upper
half octave. The lower notes sounded pretty good all along, but I just couldn’t
get anything higher than an A. It would do, but it felt kind of awful. Like I
had failed.
That was Friday. On Saturday morning I woke up clear, and went upstairs to have Mr. Spherical Model record me before I ate or did anything else that would make me lose it. And I did it. I’m glad I’m mixed in with a whole choir of singers, instead of having that performance be a solo, but I think it was a good contribution.
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| "2020 Virtual Christmas Choir, The First Noel, sung by combined choirs of two faiths" I am bottom row, second from left in this screenshot |
Little vocal miracles like that have been happening to me
since junior high. So many times I had to sing while ill, unable to control my
voice on my own, but with God’s help, I was able to do the performance. There
have also been a few when I sang with adequate training and nothing in the way,
but the stage fright caused by so many out-of-control moments have still
required that I have to trust God to allow the beautiful sound to come. In
fact, this has happened so often that singing is literally a way I come to feel
in touch with God.
There’s this part in the movie Chariots of Fire when Eric
Liddell, a preacher who is also a runner, says something like, “I believe God
made me for a purpose, but He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His
pleasure.”
That is how I feel about singing. I am accomplished,
although not a great performer. But sometimes the sound and ability show such
beauty, I can feel His pleasure. Music, and singing especially, brings together
body and spirit, which I think is what we have this body to learn to do. Music
gives me a sample of God’s joy, which we should plan to experience
everlastingly in Heaven.
I hope you enjoy this video, which was made with much
love and care. Merry Christmas!
I'm unable to embed, so click on the link below the screenshot, or here, to watch.
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