Advent

I heard this album today after arriving back in New Zealand. It made quite a contrast with my penultimate night in Sydney, spent looking at the houses decorated for Christmas. The decorated houses are a kind of 21st Century folk art using projectors, LED lights, snow machines (in a 30 degree Sydney summer. Yes really) and automatons. 100 houses viewed, give or take. And the imagery was 3 Nativity scenes and the rest Santas, trees, snowmen, stockings, gifts, reindeer, candy canes and elves. There is no use crying about putting Christ back in Christmas: if Christ was ever there he's not now. The lit houses are icons to the central religious belief of Western Culture, namely, that possessing stuff will make you happy. The sisters, I think, have another motivation.

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I've done something to mark the start of Advent. I've deactivated my Facebook Account. Perhaps in due course I'll reactivate it again but at the moment Im rather inclined not to. I'm not going to post on here for a while either. I guess I no longer feel the need to live any of my life in public. Perhaps I no longer think I have anything to say. Perhaps I'm clearing my head of LED Santas to make more room for what the nuns are singing about.

Comments

Merv said…

Wonderful music has much to say about Advent and Christmas. This sounds like wonderful music!
This year our choir featured 'Lutebook Lullaby' and 'In Dulci Jubilo'. Last year it was 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring'.

16 December 2017 at 20:35

Kelvin Wright said…

The Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist have an extraordinary sound. It has the innocence and purity of a children's choir but it is mature and assured. As one of the producers says in the clip above, it is the sound of a choir with no ego in it. No one is striving to be heard.

17 December 2017 at 17:06

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