However, with this wonderful blessing of a white Christmas came some unexpected change of plans musically and liturgically. Alas, I could not make it to Dallas for midnight mass with the latin mass community. I was supposed to sing a Victoria's "O Magnum Mysterium" mass and everything, but with the way the highways are constructed here and the fact that they have NOTHING to put on the roads, I didn't make it far. It would have been EXTREMELY treacherous. I never would have thought that a couple inches of snow would be so treacherous, but it was also the ice underneath. You see, in Texas, I think the road engineers pride themselves in seeing how many overpasses they can stack on top of one another and loop through one another. So their highways are way up in the air and so they froze over VERY BADLY with ice. There were sooo many cars spinning off the road, even when going 30 mph! I would have been afraid not so much that I would spin off the road myself, but that someone else would lose control and hit my car! It would have taken forever to get to Dallas going that speed anyway.
However, God works in interesting ways, because instead of singing a polyphonic mass for the Dallas latin mass, I got to stay at the College of St Thomas More's chapel and help with singing there! I even got to walk to and from my apartment to the chapel (about a 20 min walk) with my good friend Andrew on the eve of Christmas in the snow. As he put it, that was a very nice and RARE blessing in Texas! And my friend Richard who is the director at the chapel, had planned very nice music, including a simpler polyphonic mass. I had happened to even be at one of their rehearsals for this music earlier in the week, since my roommate was the one who was supposed to sing and was late, so i filled in for her. But since her family lives a half hour away and she went home in the afternoon, she couldn't even make it back for mass! So instead, I sang, which made the polyphonic mass still possible, and with a devout priest who celebrates the novus ordo mass ad orientem.
It is still not as beautiful and captivating as the latin mass, but it was the best 2nd choice around here! And I still got to sing beautiful and worthy music. Truly, God works in strange ways :)
Well, a Merry Christmas to all who will read this. I have a flight home to Vermont tomorrow, which, I pray will not be delayed, since it is already supposed to get there late, at 11pm. So far, travel is looking okay. I might beat the storm before it reaches the far east coast. At least that is what it is showing on the weather channel. However, they could be wrong... since there was NOTHING in the forecast only TWO days ago about the Texas blizzard we just got today!
Gaudete, gaudete! Christus est natus ex Maria Virgine, gaudete!
3 comments:
Hi, it's a very great blog.
I could tell how much efforts you've taken on it.
Keep doing!
Hi Kimberly,
My name is Tim. I just wanted to let you know how intriguing I have found your blog. While updating my own blog one day, I clicked the “Next Blog” link at the top just to see what Blogger would pull out of the air. Of all the millions of blogs it hosts, it chose yours. I have read through all of your entries and was very blessed by some – especially those of late as you have wrestled with some serious vocational questions. As I try to discern, or at least understand, the Lord’s working in my own life, it is an encouragement to see how your life, too, has changed in the years since starting your blog. It is support to know you are a real person with real longings, just like me, out there somewhere in this world. And it is such a challenge to me, as I read about your focus on Christ, on righteousness, and holiness – to make sure I am keeping Him in my focus too.
Yes- that WAS amazing wasnt it?
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