Did you know?
Yes, I love our Christmas and Easter services and hymns! I love and hold in my heart for this lifetime, memories of our almost High Mass Christmas Eve services at Trinity, Apalachicola, church bursting at the seams with parishioners, friends and neighbors from throughout our small town, pot of incense smoking impatiently outside the front door, while inside from the balcony Wesley Chesnut sings "O Holy Night" and the choir ready to break into the Latin hymn "Adeste Fideles" then immediately processing down the center aisle to "O Come, All Ye Faithful", behind thurifer and crucifer. Fourteen years of that wonder, and for many long years after retiring from there in 1998 I was as certain as I've ever been of anything that in all the world, Christmas happened only at Trinity Episcopal Church, Apalachicola, and in that magical and most holy night.
But April 2009 at the rector's invitation, I returned to Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, my home church from 1955 that in 1957 sent us off into the world married and starting real life: Navy, business, travel, adjunct-professoring, seminary and ordination, priest-preacher-&-pastoring. Then the phone call that I still happily remember.
Of all that has happened to me in life, that, the rector's phone call to me in my church office at Laguna Beach, set the stage for life's happiest season, home at Holy Nativity. And though memories of early and mid-life Christmases hold, nowhere but home again at Holy Nativity Church & School has so settled as the center of my Being. I am daily thankful. And then last evening. Last evening we had our Festival of Lessons & Carols that opens the reality and joy of Christmas. With Advent's tone of guilty penitence and hesitant anticipation, Advent, as I thought last year after Hurricane Michael, can go to hell; Christmas has come. In last evening's service, maybe our best of the church year, the lessons call forth the story, our story, and the music stirs the heart. The choir, the people, the organ and piano, the strings, the bassoon. And, a surprise, maybe dearest to me last evening was hearing the strings play "Mary, did you know?" as the words drifted through my mind
Mary did you know that your baby boy would one day walk on water?
Mary did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters?
Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new?
This child that you've delivered, will soon deliver you
Mary did you know that your baby boy will give sight to a blind man?
Mary did you know that your baby boy will calm a storm with his hand?
Did you know that your baby boy has walked where angels trod?
When you kiss your little baby, you kiss the face of God
Mary did you know?
Mary did you know?
Mary did you know?
Mary did you know?
Mary did you know?
Mary did you know?
The blind will see, the deaf will hear, the dead will live again
The lame will leap, the dumb will speak the praises of the lamb
Mary did you know that your baby boy is Lord of all creation?
Mary did you know that your baby boy would one day rule the nations?
Did you know that your baby boy is heaven's perfect lamb?
That sleeping child you're holding is the great I AM
Mary did you know?
Mary did you know?
Mary did you know?
Mary did you know?
Mary did you know?
Mary did you know?
Oh, Mary did you know?
Merry Christmas!
T+
But April 2009 at the rector's invitation, I returned to Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, my home church from 1955 that in 1957 sent us off into the world married and starting real life: Navy, business, travel, adjunct-professoring, seminary and ordination, priest-preacher-&-pastoring. Then the phone call that I still happily remember.
Of all that has happened to me in life, that, the rector's phone call to me in my church office at Laguna Beach, set the stage for life's happiest season, home at Holy Nativity. And though memories of early and mid-life Christmases hold, nowhere but home again at Holy Nativity Church & School has so settled as the center of my Being. I am daily thankful. And then last evening. Last evening we had our Festival of Lessons & Carols that opens the reality and joy of Christmas. With Advent's tone of guilty penitence and hesitant anticipation, Advent, as I thought last year after Hurricane Michael, can go to hell; Christmas has come. In last evening's service, maybe our best of the church year, the lessons call forth the story, our story, and the music stirs the heart. The choir, the people, the organ and piano, the strings, the bassoon. And, a surprise, maybe dearest to me last evening was hearing the strings play "Mary, did you know?" as the words drifted through my mind
Mary did you know that your baby boy would one day walk on water?
Mary did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters?
Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new?
This child that you've delivered, will soon deliver you
Mary did you know that your baby boy will give sight to a blind man?
Mary did you know that your baby boy will calm a storm with his hand?
Did you know that your baby boy has walked where angels trod?
When you kiss your little baby, you kiss the face of God
Mary did you know?
Mary did you know?
Mary did you know?
Mary did you know?
Mary did you know?
Mary did you know?
The blind will see, the deaf will hear, the dead will live again
The lame will leap, the dumb will speak the praises of the lamb
Mary did you know that your baby boy is Lord of all creation?
Mary did you know that your baby boy would one day rule the nations?
Did you know that your baby boy is heaven's perfect lamb?
That sleeping child you're holding is the great I AM
Mary did you know?
Mary did you know?
Mary did you know?
Mary did you know?
Mary did you know?
Mary did you know?
Oh, Mary did you know?
Merry Christmas!
T+