Behind the Music Stand

      In the traditional liturgical calendar, the season leading up to Christmas day is called “Advent.”   This is designed to be a time of introspection—of preparing our hearts for the coming of the Lord at Christmas.   There is usually one Sunday after Christmas and before Epiphany, when we celebrate the revelation of the Christ Child to the wisemen.   The Sundays following Epiphany, up until Lent begins, are “Ordinary Sundays,” from “Ordinal,” so they are numbered “First Sunday after Epiphany,” “Second Sunday after Epiphany,” etc.      So if we are preparing our hearts for Christmas in the season preceding it, then logically, we must be celebrating Christmas in the days following it!  How then, should we celebrate Christmas after all the gifts are opened and the tree is taken down?  We should be spreading the Good News of Christmas with our words and our actions—the Good News that Christ has come to give us the Peace of God—the “Shalom,” that is wholeness and completeness found

Today is our annual Advent retreat at church, and, as usual, we have different rooms set up in the church for individual meditation and prayer between times of group devotions.  The sanctuary and the adjoining prayer room are set up to be rooms of sensory stimulation--sights, sounds and even smells are dominant in these rooms.  Our Choir room, on the other hand, is set up to be a quiet room--almost a deprivation of senses. "What is the point?" you may ask.  The answer came out of a desire to help you set aside this retreat time for something different than normal.  We asked ourselves, "How can we make this a time of worship?" Without going into the voluminous explanation of what exactly worship is, that begged the question, "How do we experience worship?"  (For the sake of the discussion, we'll limit the definition of worship to the corporate, "In church" version.) So you sit down in the pew or chair, and things happen.  Songs are sung, s