Comfort and Hope Are Around

I was doubly involved in Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion broadcast yesterday. I am a graduate of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA, and a Moravian who has Bethlehem and Moravian Christmas running through my blood.

Well, Garrison broadcast yesterday from the Arts Center at Lehigh. He featured the Choir of Central Moravian Church under the direction of the daughter of one of my friends who was a seminary classmate of mine. In addition there was the world-renowned Bethlehem Bach Choir who I could listen to when a student at Lehigh simply by sitting outside Packer Chapel and allowing the music to lead heavenward.

Garrison gave the Moravian Church and Bethlehem one of the biggest and best national boosts we have had in a long time (if ever.) In his usual eclectic style (which is part of what I love about his show) he could give one cultural whiplash by going from the choirs doing incredible choral music to the loping country intro to the "Lives of the Cowboys" or the Powdermilk Biscuit theme flowing into bluegrass style chorale carols. What a wonderful show.

At the same time Garrison's nationally syndicated column talked about the Moravians and Christmas. I am humbled by what he had to say. Here are the parts that said a lot to me:

And now I am at the Hotel Bethlehem, about to go to the Central Moravian Church and hear the choir sing "Morning Star" and "Stille Nacht" and "Break Forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light," Christmas hymns that all Moravians know by heart.

An electric star shines from a hill over the town, and there is a grand pageant with three camels, more than in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, and even a living creche with bearded townsmen playing shepherds and wise men. I don't know a soul in this town, but came here once before and sat in the church and felt immediately surrounded by quiet kindness, and then the Moravians sang, and O God can they sing....

So I'll find a place in the middle of the church, jammed in tight with Bethlehemites, and out of the songs will come a miraculous vision of innocence, pure innocent love, so rare in our time, and we will savor that, and then something else will happen, who knows what.

I guess that's what Christmas can be all about!

P.S. Of course Pat Donahue's use of and discussion about C.F. Martin Guitars from Nazareth just up the road from Bethlehem which has a rich and wonderful history and a Moravian connection added another wonderful dimension to the show. Thanks, Garrison!