The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
December 17, 2006
Vol. 9 no. 49

Everything But...
           The Word is limited today. Not really a sabbatical as a transformation of its shape. Our annual Lessons and Carols follow the King’s College College, Cambridge, approach. We only do 2/3 of the readings, omitting a couple of readings from Genesis 3 and 9, Isaiah 11 and John 1 (if you hurry, you can read them before our service starts!). The math doesn’t quite work out because we stretch out Luke’s story of the Nativity into two readings.
           I don’t think King’s College Chapel can do any better than us, however, musically. Our sanctuary has infinitely better acoustics, our choir backs down to none, Sharlene is preluding us on the grand piano, Hart is surrounding us with the organ, and that Knox-Met Brass is blowing us out of the place at the postlude.
           Besides, how long did it take you to come into Knox-Metropolitan this morning and find your seat? The service begins in Cambridge promptly at 3:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve - the BBC rules - but you are only allowed to enter through the King’s College gate at 5 a.m. and then queue up. (Only the British would use a French word to mean to “get in line”!) By 10 a.m. they take a head count and more or less tell you whether you will actually get into the Chapel. We hope a lot of heads are around you in the pews, but I don’t think any of you were caught in the queue.
           Music is no less the Word and far closer to the angelic than most of our prosaic verbiage. Something happened way back then that defied our language’s ability to describe, so we simply sang and played and that something elusive in the air took on a tune in our heads we can’t get rid of. Make sure you sing loudly. The BBC isn’t recording.