Ravished

A huge volume of air overhead; seen from above, the large space below tightly packed with seated, attentive people. Its exterior is one the most well-known in American architecture, and this was its justly celebrated interior, full of rich, deep color.

The music: exquisite, by Britten, Rutter, Taverner, Boles, Dupre, Posten, Sandstrom, Desamours: the cream of contemporary choral composers. Children's voices and adults': wonderful harmonies, fascinating rhythms, haunting sounds. I won't soon forget them.

The space carried the sounds carefully, especially those high boy soprano, and deposited them carefully in each ear. The words were not always clear, especially since normal speech rhythms were foregone for musical ones The music was almost overwhelmingly bright, colorful, patterned and penetrating. I was ravished.

But when spoken, the words were about God, meaning, I'm sure, you, God-in-love, and what happened long ago which was miraculous, they said, and still important today. But here's what I didn't understand: important as symbol, or sentiment, or as fact in the field we'd be wise to take into consideration?

You're more than just a symbol, I think, an emblem for some insight or perception we don't want to forget, do want to share. I take you to be a presence, actively seeking to engage the Beloved, which includes me, in ongoing ever-broadening conversation of friendship, hospitality, exploration.

You have an agenda: an ever-deepening relationship with an ever more rich and responsive Beloved all the way into the world to come. You pursue it all the time, never bullying or dictating or whining, or wagging the finger, but straightforward wooing.

A deep awareness of your continuing presence and your consistent aim and how the one is actually bringing to fruit the other is what I didn't hear in the words that separated the glorious episodes of music. You were very there then, I heard, but now it's all up to us because....

Sometimes people say we know you're present when what we want (or better than we want) happens, but when things go south, say that you're being mean, or gone, or were never anyway. I'm  sometimes one of these people. Sometimes people say we we're only got ourselves to thank if things go well or badly. I know that feeling too.

But I don't think you're an interventionist (we've seen what problems that can unleash) or mere audience (as most of us were last night) but a suitor on the 2nd person channel you specialize in. The world works as it does producing weal and woe, but we, I and others, can be open to your energy, potentiality and power (as you to ours) and do what we wouldn't have, couldn't have otherwise. (Who's to tell, somebody asks reasonably.)  And that's what we both are after: bringing the whole world into our relationship.

It's not as if those who listened last night don't live as if this is the case; many, many do, oh lives that abash me. But they think of you as either hectoring micro-manager or absentee landlord (this latter is the sense I got.) But there's another way to see you, know you, encounter you, and that's as God-in-love.

Merci beaucoup for last night's beauty, but as I look at a recent selfie of my mum and me, I think: what's aesthetic is one thing, what's powerful through presence is another.