It Came Upon a Midnight Clear Verse 2

The beauty continues, still in that one glorious moment:

Still through the cloven skies they come

With peaceful wings unfurled

And still their heavenly music floats 

 O'er all the weary world.

Above its sad and lonely plains

 They bend on hovering wing

 And ever o'er its Babel sounds

The blessed angels sing. 

Or so it seems at first!

Because what else would you follow up that one perfect moment of transcendent beauty with?  Why, the next perfect moment of transcendent beauty.

Because if there's one thing we should remember at Christmas, it's that Jesus coming down to be with us wasn't the only time that God was here with us.  It's just the time He had to roll back the curtain of the sanctuary entirely and un-mystify the whole deal so that we would understand.

That the glorious song of old feels familiar because it's playing right now.  All around us.  The lonely plains, the weary world...above us the angels' harmony is soaring.  Still they dip through the skies, still they bend on hovering wing, just beyond the touch of our narrow little view of reality.

But the line that really gets me in this verse is "And ever o'er its Babel sounds" because not only does it specify that the song is happening "ever", but it goes to my favorite theme of the song communicating to everyone.  Because the Tower of Babel may be the mythic legend that I once had to explain to a theatre student should not be cited as historical fact (much less the reason we invented theatre), but it's one that gets to the heart of the human condition on Earth.

The source of most of our evils throughout the ages has been, I would argue, simply this: an ongoing process of trying to define "people" as "only certain people".  All of the terrible -isms (racism, sexism, anti-semitism) and their ilk are fantastically useful to this purpose as they cut through whole swaths of the population and designate them as unworthy of our resources, our compassion, our mercy, our love, our honor.

The reasons humans give for why they do this -- when they realize that they are doing this -- vary from greed for our resources, fear they are scarce, fear of attack, and the simple inconvenience of alternative worldviews confusing us or contradicting the accepted dogma of those in power.

But the truth is that over all of these arbitrary divisions, all of these ridiculous labels and designations that we assign to different groups in this terrible process, over all of that Babel screaming, the blessed angels sing.  For all of us.  Above all of our petty squabbles and all the things we fight wars over.  Over all that noise is celestial music.

And someday the music will win.  Until then, some days perhaps it's enough to know that if we close our eyes and listen, then perhaps we will be blessed to hear it.