Merry Christmas; lessons from Handel's Messiah

When I was a young man I smoked.  I loved it.  I loved everything about striking a match and lighting my cigarette, or pipe, or cigar.  I loved the aroma of the burning tobacco.  I loved the flavor of the smoke as it rushed across my tongue on its way into my lungs.  I had asthma since I was a kid, and the tobacco smoke acted as a narcotic on my inflamed lungs and helped to numb their pain.  That’s what my doctor told me after I had stopped smoking in my twenties.  After I stopped smoking my lungs hurt and the doctor told me that the tobacco smoke had literally acted as a narcotic to soothe my aching lungs, but that in time the pain would lessen or go away entirely.  Mostly, it did.

But anyway, before I stopped smoking, I would wake up in the middle of the night and crave a cigarette.  I would get out of bed, turn my radio on low volume, light up a smoke, and enjoy it while I sat in the dark and listened to music.

 One Christmas morning in the early a.m. (it couldn’t have been much past midnight) I awoke craving a cigarette.  I turned on my radio, which was tuned to my favorite station, and I heard the most glorious music I had ever heard emitting from the speaker.  It was as if I had died in my sleep and awoken in Heaven to the glorious music and singing of the angels.

 I chain-smoked while I listened to the entire two-hour plus presentation, which I learned was the complete broadcast of Handel’s Messiah.  I had never heard it before and was even unaware of the famed Hallelujah chorus.  The music captured me; it enthralled my soul like nothing had ever done before.  I had to hear it again.

 I found Messiah in a boxed set of two cassette tapes in my favorite local store, and I played those tapes repeatedly until they began to wear out, and I made copies of them and played the copies until those wore out.  Eventually CDs came out and I purchased the performance on those.  It became an important tradition to me to make sure that I played Messiah several times each and every holiday season.

As I write this I’m an old man, and Handel’s Messiah is playing in digital form on my desktop computer (thanks to Amazon Music) and emitting from small but sophisticated speakers on my desk.  As I listen I’m transported back to my small dark room, the sound of the small transistor radio tuned to the frequency of my favorite FM radio station, and the glow of the cigarette providing occasional illumination in the darkness.  It’s a full circle moment, and one that fills me both with a mild nostalgia and a gratefulness for the life I’ve led (and sometimes, had to survive).

In my youth listening to Messiah filled me with a certain reverence and hope.  In my old age it mostly wraps bandages on the wounds my soul has suffered along the way.  So in some respects it has been a sort of panacea for most of my lifetime.  A crutch to lean on emotionally.  A reminder that beauty can be found amongst the ugliness so prevalent in the world.  A small light in the darkness.  A friend whose comfort has been consistent when so many other areas of my life have faltered or failed entirely.

The key to the ability to endure life with some level of happiness is to find out exactly what it is that keeps us going, makes us happy, and enables us to achieve an upbeat mood, and then to hold onto that with a grip of iron, and forbid anything or anyone to wrest it away from us.  It must have enduring and eternal qualities (or at least be able to survive our journey on Earth with us).  It should be something that’s immune to the winds of change and the fads of fashion and fleeting popularity.  Something that we can clutch onto in times of sorrow and celebrate with in times of joy and gladness.  Something that never lets us down.

 To discover exactly what that thing is we may have to make a return to our past; or…we may have to avoid it altogether.

 

 

Maybe we’ve neglected to have made such an anchor for our souls along the way, and now we find ourselves adrift.  It’s okay.  It’s not too late.  It’s never too late to cast about for the thing that will stabilize and satisfy our souls.

We may have to do a little serious soul-searching in order to discern true north, to find the direction that will lead us to our warm blanket of comfort that will shield us from this chilly world.  But that comfort is there, if we will seek it with diligence.

 I hope that you will either discover this needed balm for your soul—your very own Messiah—or recognize and appreciate the thing that has been a joy and comfort to you for all of these years, and that in this somewhat strange and difficult holiday season that you will allow it to continue to bring you hope.

God bless, Merry Christmas, and well wishes for a happy and bountiful New Year. 

Riding with Ghosts, Angels, and the Spirits of the Dead

John Russell, Psychic / Psychic Readings