22: Take joy

For many years, I was involved with Revels, an organization that produces celebrations of the winter solstice in cities around the country. I haven’t performed with a Revels company in several years, but I try each year to catch the public radio special that a friend puts together, featuring music from the previous year’s shows. This year’s Revels radio program was on tonight in Houston.

As I listened to the songs, carols and instrumental pieces, many of which I’ve performed before, I thought about the people with whom I’ve sung and played on stages in three cities. I’ve lost touch with quite a few; several are no longer living. Into my reverie came a voice I knew, singing Lord of the Dance — but, I thought, it couldn’t be, because Jack Langstaff died last December. But that voice was so unique, so familar…

At the end of the song, the host identified the performance as Jack Langstaff singing with the Houston Revels in 1991. I felt a rush of emotion. Goosebumps, then tears. I was in that 1991 performance, the first Christmas Revels in Houston. I could see the set, my costume, my friends singing and dancing on that stage. I remembered the joy of creating that Revels, and the community to which I belonged in that time and place.

I miss Jack (and Lisby and Evelyn, gone too soon). I miss performing. I miss that community. I miss the Revels.

The host closed with the final line of a piece recited often in Revels performances, from a letter by Fra Giovanni Giocondo in 1513. I hadn’t read Fra Giovanni’s letter in several years. I think it was time.

I salute you. I am your friend and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you have not got; but there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take. No Heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take Heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. Take peace!

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see; and to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look.

Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, by wisdom, with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the Angel’s hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty: believe me, that angel’s hand is there; the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing Presence. Our joys, too: be not content with them as joys, they too conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and of purpose, so full of beauty—beneath its covering—that you will find that earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage, then to claim it: that is all! But courage you have; and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, wending through unknown country, home.

And so, at this Christmas time, I greet you; not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem, and with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.

– Fra Giovanni Giocondo

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A poinsettia is crimson joy.

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