Holy. Set Apart. Good.

(Put a bird on it!)

Yesterday at school, I started thinking about 'Joy to the World'. 

Uncommon thinking for life so late in March, I know, but there it was. A lingering thought about how much I love the song.  This year at Christmas I loved it especially, and it was because I mostly heard it Sufjan style.  Sufjan Stevens makes me think of my cousins, somehow always cooler, older, more advanced in the world than me.  Somehow always still watching out for me too.  When I was little they would tease.  I fell for everything, every time.  When I got older, they were my friends.  Of all the people in the world, these are some of my favorites. 




When I was in college, my cousins lived in the cities and would take me out for coffee or dinner or just out, away from campus.  They knew about small Christian colleges and the bubbles they become.  Oh, they knew.  They took me to places in the city that, in that time in my life seemed foreign and far away.  Now these are the places I prefer.  And there I heard about Sufjan.  Better yet, I heard Sufjan.

This year at Christmas, they sang this version of 'Joy to the World' at church.  A little church in the middle of Iowa, bitterly cold winds sweeping across the fields, and indoors, all of the people in red sweaters and this quiet music.  Here is a perfect lilting tempo.  I think that yesterday, in the quickened pace of the end of the quarter at school, I longed for the tempo.

I told myself I shouldn't listen to Christmas music in March.  (Lame Monday thought.)  Now, here, Tuesday, I see afresh that of course I can listen to that music.  It is amazing what ridiculous things we tell ourselves.  It is amazing that I also forgot that this music brings out what is holy.   

A Sufjan song like this would be new new new to the people at my grandma's church, but they loved it.  And this year it wasn't just my cousins, but Kate too, who is my cousins wife.  Who is amazing, who is inspiring, who makes singing and acting seem easy.  (We all know it's not, but she makes it look like that.)  I think that's what happens when people are good at something and they love it.  When they share it and live in it, whatever 'it' is looks easy and graceful and true.  I also think that sometimes in that ease, you also feel God tapping on your shoulder.  And He is telling you about your life.  

I do not feel this when acting.  (In fact, it's the opposite feeling...a crushing, suffocating, sidelong glance around, looking always for safer ground.)  I do feel this though when I am teaching. Not, disclaimer of my life, that it is all a perfect walk in a spring park.  Your art usually does not occur to you to be this way.  But there have been times when I am teaching and I think about 'easy, graceful, true'.  And I think about God, which is of course the point of all of this.  Despite being a mess, this feeling surprises me mid-stride, and I am deep down happy to be where I am.  I say deep down happy a lot, and I mean to point to the surprising good, the thing you are that tells you about yourself in the world. 

It is usually never the thing you'd ever conjure up on your own.

I will forever have this memory of the church, and all of the gray heads in the pews, and my cousins in the front singing this tempo and this song.  It was holy and set apart and good.  They play for lots of reasons, and you can feel it when you hear them.  And 'Joy to the World' is so powerful.  I love that so many people sing it every year across the world.  I love that it can be quiet or loud.    Even those who don't think they know about church or want to know about church know this song.  I love that too.  There is power in the word 'let' said so often throughout it.  I think I might love that most of all.

Happy memories follow you and live in you.  That's what's nice about getting older...your mind's eye, in some form, takes you back.  And so, I have begun to find that when I hear 'Joy to the World' anywhere, I will always think of this year at Christmas.  A tiny little church in the middle of a big space called Iowa.  And I am there with my family, and it is, for a time, very still.  I am at the back of church and I am holding my cousin's charming, busy toddler in my arms.  And for a few minutes, he is quiet too.  Everyone is still except for Sufjan music, and my cousins, who are singing it so well. 

Holy.  Set apart.  Good.