Peace on Earth and Barry Manilow

I vaguely remember one New Year’s Eve–call it early high school in Bethel Park, PA. I don’t know whose basement we’re in, but there’s a tv up on the wall in the corner and we’re waiting for the ball to drop. Barry Manilow is singing “It’s just another New Year’s Eve,” and my friends and I are throwing things at the tv. “Good riddance,” we are yelling at 1970-something. The details are sketchy from this distance, but I’m thinking our bad year had to do with boys, maybe even one specific boy. Maybe it was one boy who several of us had been in love with. Maybe some of those loves had overlapped, and maybe that boy who might have been tall and lanky had been careless with our eager hearts. Maybe that Barry Manilow song would become an anthem of sorts, pulling us back together. Maybe when Barry Manilow sang, “We’ve made mistakes, but we’ve made good friends too,” my friends and I looked at each other and knew our friendships would outlast all those high school boys who might have tossed their heads to push long straight hair out of their eyes while they played tone poems on the piano and sang soulfully to each one of us as if we were the only one who mattered. Like I said, it’s all blurry from this distance.

This New Year’s Eve, I haven’t been able to get a purchase on my feelings. My life with a small l is as peaceful and rich as it’s ever been. After trying without success to sell our house for the past few years, we finally decided just to stay. I love my house. The ceiling in the family room soars to three high windows, way up on the wall. Sometimes when I am sitting on the couch, I see a plane fly by. Sometimes when I am standing at the kitchen sink, I see a friendly moon rising over the deck. Sometimes when I sit in the loft at night, all of Albuquerque twinkles below me, and I remember how the snow crunched in Pittsburgh, how the whole city glittered beneath Mt. Washington at night. During the day, the Sandias put on a cloud-show, playing games with the light from the moment the first red glow appears before dawn.

Since we’re staying, we’re doing the things you do when you love something. We’re fixing up, polishing, tending to, shining. Everything old is feeling new. It’s not the same anticipation I had been feeling about building a new house; but it feels good. It feels solid. It feels like home.

Last Christmas, not long before he died, my brother bought a tree and a nativity set. He was newly excited about living, even as his health was getting worse. I put up his nativity set this year, and I think about him when I walk into the living room. Maybe that’s how I feel about 2016. It was sad and hard and beautiful and joyful, and we’re still here. Last night just before midnight I asked Fred what he thought was the best thing about 2016. He thought for a while, and then he said, “I’m still alive.”

I thought about what he said in church this morning. I started singing in church choirs in middle school. With the exception of a few years when I was too angry to be a Catholic and too Catholic to be anything else, I’ve sung in church choirs my whole life. I need it: the camaraderie, the ritual, the faith act of opening your mouth and turning air and flesh and bone into music. All of it feeds me in a way I’ve finally learned not to try to understand with my head.

This morning we were singing “It Came upon the Midnight Clear.” The story goes like this: Once upon a time, a bunch of angels dipped close to earth, playing golden harps and singing about peace. The earth just lay there listening (“in solemn stillness” to be precise), but didn’t really get it. I’m picturing a polite clap from a few cold, bored shepherds leaning on crooked staffs on a rocky hillside before they turned back toward the fire. Fast forward through the centuries into verse two and the angels keep coming. They float around singing elevator music about peace on earth while the “weary world,” now filled with “sad and lowly plains,” keeps ignoring them.

By verse three, we’re getting more explicit, and strangely, this morning I find the words deeply comforting. The angels have been singing for “two thousand years of wrong” while “warring humankind hears not.” The lyricist even gets a little testy: “hush your noise” and listen to the damn angels, he says. I’m not sure I should be feeling better about 2016 and life with a capital L in 2017 because the world has been messed up for millennia, but somehow I am.

Neither Barry Manilow nor the carol writer can resist sappy optimism in the final verse. Barry tells us bloodlessly that we’re going to be “just fine,” but not even I can look around the world heading into 2017 and believe it’s going to be that simple. (Besides, it’s obvious Barry just needed to rhyme with Auld Lang Syne. He could just as easily have said, “the cancer is benign,” or “now go out and dine.”)

I’ll get to the angels’ happy/sappy ending in a minute, but first I need to tell you about something that happens every now and then when I’m singing. Once in a while, my body disappears. That’s not exactly what I mean, but I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s as though I’m not the one making the music; rather, I’m as much an instrument as Justin’s recorder or Rachel’s viola or Ken’s violin. In those moments, instead of singing, I’m being sung.

That happened to me this morning during the angel song. In the fourth verse, the angels stop flying around and the writer imagines a better time, a time he believes is coming, maybe even immanently. In this new era, the angels give up on floating around strumming cheery Muzak on their shiny harps. In this new era, an impatient peace takes over and”flings” it’s “ancient splendors” over the earth.

Imagine that! I spend a lot of time talking to students about using strong verbs, and I’ve never noticed that one before. I want to be alive when peace starts flinging itself over this weary world.

I’m left with contradictions as this new year begins. We’re all still alive. My life in this house I’ve lived in since 1998 feels whole and rich and grounded.  And yet, I know it’s probably not just another New Year’s eve. The world beyond my house feels jarring and chaotic, violent and confused.  It seems unlikely that peace will pick 2017 to start flinging itself at this weary world.

I was talking to a friend after church on New Year’s day. “I’m ok today,” he said, and I think there’s wisdom in his words. All sorts of things we can’t foresee will surely be demanded of us tomorrow. I’m going to try to meet them with love. I’m going to try to notice when peace comes flinging my way. It’s been a long time since anyone accused me of being an angel, but for what it’s worth, I’m going to keep on singing.