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'dog in the manger' blood wine these cannibalistic rites -nice songs though!! anyway happy midwinter from here to your midsummer P (crachty old atheist!) -----Original Message----- From: Max Richards Sent: Wednesday, December 30, 2015 4:49 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: 'Singing to Myself' Singing to Myself [Seattle, 24 December 2015] Standing room only tonight in the Catholic Cathedral - bleak midwinter’s festival - Christmas Eve’s big turn-out. There’s a choir obliging their conductor and us, a lot of assistants in long white garments processing with candles held high - then the mitred Archbishop smiling as if a world-celebrity chef. Carols everyone knows and joins in heartily: Hark the herald angels sing - and all but me. Once I had a voice, once I sang - in choirs, in the car, in the bathroom, in the bar. That was then - since when I stand mute, while round me Christmas carolers’ ‘God rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay’ touches me immensely, silently. I feel it in my larynx and lungs, tensely. Eyes sometimes water. The young! how they sing! the middle-aged also. I’ve been middle-aged too. Though not of any flock, I sang for my memories of sweetness in company, my lack of a shepherd, my sceptic’s teasing, dog in the manger, amused at believers whose Christmas music gave me the shivers. Sumptuous this high cathedral where we well-fed folk celebrate with brass fanfare and great organ a proud religion’s humble origin in a baby being born. On a tall pole leans a wooden cross, nailed to it a silver Christ. In the procession it came in first. I could come back at Easter-time, music also beyond my voice, miracles even further beyond me; singing to myself about peace, no-faith nor multi-faith, without sustaining myth; voicing no image of the divine, just of human love, bread and wine.