And Suddenly There Were With the Angels . . .

Fifteen, maybe twenty years ago I sang with a choir for a Christmas program. We rehearsed several times in the late evenings. On the night before the performance I drove through eight inches of new-fallen snow for dress rehearsal. The streets had been plowed, but it was still a challenge to get through the drifts and mounds. Some cars parked on the side of the road were almost obscured, left there too long, perhaps by college students flown home for Christmas. And more snow was coming down.

I remember street lights glowing through feathery air, inverse cones shining onto the streets below. The light seemed warm and hopeful. I remember my car sliding just a little as I rounded the corner toward the church house. I remember being stunned to discover the parking lot filling, droves of people in coats and boots walking toward the entrance. Nearly everyone had made it through the snow.

Inside the choir director stood at the front of the chapel on a platform facing the pews, the choir seated, then standing there. The room was packed with choir members. It was a massive congregation, the largest choir I had ever been part of. I don't remember what songs we sang. In fact I don't remember the performance or anything other than a solitary moment during the rehearsal.

One of the songs was through-composed and at one point during our singing, each of the vocal sections sang a different lyric, each part—Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass—sang with beautiful harmonic variance. There were instruments too, strings and maybe a french horn. It was complex and wonderful.

At this moment I felt as though there were something profoundly familiar about the music, about the movement of the notes—a tune that did not repeat itself, but created itself anew with every phrase, every stanza; multiple voices, multiple melodies and harmonies and words; each unique, separate, making its own joyful noise and all of it coalescing perfectly. I was overcome, filled beyond my ability to accurately convey what I experienced, what I remembered. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had such a moment. And the poem doesn't do it justice, but I suppose that is as it should be.
And Suddenly

Our voices join December;
a chapelful of maybe familiar faces.
Fair-haired form caresses air,
bids us wing our words on music.

Tones elevate, expand, descend
through rhythms sweeping
between hopeful harmonies.

Wind through organ pipes,
breath through brass,
strings sing gloria in excelsis Deo.

I wonder why we gather here,
what brings us through the
cold dark white,

then wander to where we sang
before with swells of friends
for miles and days and centuries,
not far from here—as heaven’s host.


Melody Newey © 2010

Life In Third Person. Luke.

You've heard it before. I don't know how many times. But I suppose I will tell it many more in years to come—this poem. This night when I looked at you laying quietly, your small form making a manger of the down pillow. The other night when I re-told the story and the poem at dinner I couldn't remember your exact age. It came to me when I started this post. It wasn't when you were a toddler and had fallen asleep watching television or when you were older and I was reflecting back on your birth.

It was New Year's Eve 1983, so dark outside and so quiet. I was twenty-two years old, a young mother. You were my sixteen-day-old Christmastime son and I was feeling so very Mary-like. This is maybe why I sincerely love all those fancy candles and statues and all things Holy Mother-ish. It seemed I understood her a little, would forever be connected to her because of you.

You had awakened just before midnight or maybe just after. I had fed you, then carefully set you in the pillow I had brought with me from the bed to put under my arm on the living room recliner when I nursed you. (I did this will all my babies—used that soft down pillow to support me, supporting them.) Then I moved us both to the floor near the Christmas tree, laid down beneath the white twinkle lights.

You slept. I cried. I loved you more than I could say. I still do.


Nativity
for Luke

There were no wise men come
when my son was born,
ten days before the Holy One.

There was no star,
no bleating sheep,
no one traveled far.

But there was an angel—
spoke of light and love.
My newborn son, like Hers,
brought hope.

Melody Newey © 1983

17 April 2011
Thank you for the way you acknowledge me when you pray over the food at dinner when we are together as a family. You say things like, "Bless mom for her efforts to bring us together as family. Help her in her life." It means a great deal to me. And I believe the Lord answers prayers like that. I feel blessed.

My Life In Third Person

Sometimes I think about dying. Maybe it's morbid, but it's what it is. Sometime I'll write about all that, but today I'm writing about writing.

One of the things I think about when I think about dying is: I haven't written a personal history yet. I've told my children that the volumes of poetry I've written—especially over the last few decades—speak more about me than any journal ever could. They know this is where they can go for my history after I'm gone. But even that part of my written history isn't well enough organized. (Some of the best poems are still on napkins or grocery receipts in a box in the closet . . . or is that box out in the storage shed? I can't remember.)

I was thinking about other ways to record the story, the important truths of my life. And one idea that seemed especially appealing came as I was working in the kitchen. I wrote it on the dry-erase board. "My Life In Third Person." I determined this would be at least one of my histories; not a history based upon chapters or seasons of growth or any such linear thing, but upon characters, people in the story who have become part of who I am and who have helped and are helping me become myself. Letters, if you will, to loved ones.

I have determined I will write this history here. On this blog. I will begin tomorrow (or someday soon thereafter) with a post for my son, Luke, as he was born on December 14th. I have no idea when the next Life In Third Person entry will come, but when it does I'll add it. And by the time I'm done, there will be a lovely, loving volume that someone can print from this blog and bind to pass on to whomever should be interested. I'll label each post to make it easier for you, whoever you are. Probably Lauren . . .

. . . maybe I'll start a new private blog for these posts. I'll let you know.

Getting the Heart Ready

This Christmas season has been too busy. School. Work. Church. Shopping. Family. That's the order of things. Not so good. Besides that, I'm hungry for writing. Last month's daily "Thank You" on this site was a blessing in more ways than I can number.

Okay, I did attend a symphony performance with my sister and made it to the Messiah Sing-in and have managed to spend enough time with my grand daughter to know each and every ornament on her Christmas tree by name and how and when and where and by whom it was made. I have also been graced with a tour of her front porch with its rainbow-lit evergreen swag hanging about the door and the wreath hung there. She motioned, Vanna White or Carol Merrill-like, to each of these delightful holiday adornments. I adore her for this. Seriously, I wish you could see the two-and-a-half-year-old hand motion.

These moments of bliss have kept me sane and at least partially in tune. Yet, I am otherwise drawn and disconnected from my usual overarching feelings of warmth and reflection during this Advent Season. I suppose it's partially because there is too much going on outside to get quiet inside.

Earlier this week I missed the annual Christmas gathering of my poetry friends with its brilliant, thoughtful and often sacred original seasonal poetry . . . because I was on campus—in class, then meeting with a tutor to prepare for the great and glorious statistics final next week. Now I'm hearing Handel's hallelujah chorus.

If I had gone to writers group I would have taken the first draft of my 2010 Christmas Poem to share with my friends there. Maybe you would like to read it. This is it. Even though some people believe one should not share one's writing, (especially in draft and especially if one ever wants to attempt to publish it) I am compelled.

Merry Christmas and God bless us every one.




How Silently

softly in the night you came,
with only your mother's
breath to warm you;

went about your business,
not so lovely as to draw any
particular attention to yourself.

How stealthy, unassuming in
your raisings from the dead,
healings of lame and leper.

And when you come again,
a thief in the night,
who will see you?

The creator hides himself
and not on purpose
from his created.

We are blind to the one
who made us whole,
who makes us still.

Still, away in a manger you lay,
in a garden you knelt, on a cross you stood.
Would I have known you then?


Melody Newey © 2010

Getting the Tree Ready

So that part's done.

Getting the Room Ready

Yesterday I left the local art market around noon and realized I hadn't had much for breakfast, so I headed downtown for lunch. As I drove I thought, "Gee, maybe I can find someone to eat lunch with." I called my friend and, amazingly, she was only a few blocks from where I was headed. She was just finishing some shopping of her own and would love to meet up with me. I love it when that happens—lunch with a friend. And it's easy. Actually this has happened a few times lately with this particular friend. I'll call her out-of-the-blue and she will just happen to be blocks or moments away and we meet for lunch or a quick store browse or whatever. It's a little gift of friendly grace.

So, anyway, as we were dining, I asked if her Christmas tree was up yet and she said, "I figure I'd better get the room ready before I commit to the tree." Good idea.

My room was ready two days ago, spotless. So I brought the fresh cut tree in from the front porch where it had been waiting for maybe five or six days for me to saw off the bottom and trim some of the lower branches. (By the way, thanks to Lisa and Jim Fischer, Jordan's parents, for so thoughtfully fetching a tree for me when they went to cut their own.) Now the tree is up and the room looks like this. Click on photo for best view Note the following in the above photo:
1. The room is no longer clean
2. poinsettia in white pot on the mantle—a gift from a friend
3. more poinsettias on the floor near hearth—a gift from me
4. red Target bag full of plastic globe ornaments for big plans in front yard
5. long-handled loppers for larger branches I missed when trimming outside
6. (back to the mantle) said branches—the first of many
7. angel tree topper on end table in front of fireplace (hard to see. it blends in)
8. (back to floor) laundry—whites folded on the floor
7. reds and yellows folded on the ottoman
8. more stuff from target and See's candy on ottoman and scotch tape
9. gifts from art market on the striped chair
10. outdoor Christmas lights timer on the floor in front of striped chair next to teddy bear, coconut and baby doll
11. more Target bags on floor with more gifts
12. small clippers on dining chair used for trimming tree top and for shaping mantle branches
13. brown box and packing material on floor—just delivered online order of my favorite lotions

I had great aspirations for finishing the tree and the room yesterday evening, but instead, I went to Salt Lake City with my sister for a Utah Symphony concert and tea.

The room can wait. Maybe I'll post another photo when things are tidy . . . later today . . . or Wednesday.