Some of This is True

"At Christmastime it is hard for even the unbeliever not to believe in something if not everything.  Peace on earth, goodwill to men, a dream of innocence that is good to hold onto, the mystery of being a child, the possibility of hope--not even the canned carols piped out over the shopping center parking plaza from Thanksgiving on can drown it out entirely. Maybe we cannot manage to believe with all our hearts. But as long as the moments last, we can believe that this is of all things  the thing most worth believing."   from The Faces of Jesus, Frederick Buechner.

Since retiring from church music a few years ago when I had no choice but to engage in Christmas, I have become an observer of "Christmas" and not much of a participant.  The "shopping center carols" tend to drown out any semblance of  the authentic mystery and wonder of the season.  This year was different.  I told my wife early on that I'm "all in."  And for the most part, I was. We not only participated in several family gatherings, but at my bidding sought out Christmas social gatherings and events. One of those events was a concert of choir and orchestra at a local United Methodist Church. We chose that one because we knew the conductor and knew that it would be good music. In January of 1976, my  good friend Ken Medema began a concert at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama with an improvised  song that included the lyrics, "Tonight you're going to hear more than just music." These words became true for me that fateful night as well with the concert a couple of weeks ago. Because of my education and experience, if music isn't technically good, then I can't enjoy it.  I just pick it apart. And after I get finished picking it apart, there's nothing left to enjoy. It's like peeling an onion to find its center. The music at this concert wasn't just good, it was astoundingly good. The orchestra was in tune and well-balanced.  The blend, balance and intonation of the choir was impeccable.  The diction was uniform and superb. The repertoire was perfectly balanced. The program saved the best soloist, a tenor, to the "contemporary" number at the end. All the musicians deserved the extended standing ovation they received. I joined in the applause

It's a shame that I  pick music apart. Because of that habit, I miss so much. Unfortunately, I am very capable of picking Christmas apart as well. And when I'm finished picking it apart, there's nothing much left of its mystery and awe.  Those "canned carols" take their toll. I understand and acknowledge that "the holidays" include many more celebrations than Christmas. And  for better or for worse, "Christmas" has come to include so much more than the birth of Jesus. Family gatherings, concerts, social events, shopping in the stores and online, the exchange of gifts and the activities from the North Pole are all a part of Christmas.  "The true meaning of Christmas" is different for everyone. Even so, the Biblical birth narratives for many Christians are at the heart of the season. I know that as beautiful and holy the narratives of the birth of Jesus are in Matthew and Luke, they're not the same. The genealogies of Jesus aren't the same. Some of the details of the visitors don't jibe. What  the holy family did before and after Bethlehem isn't the same in both accounts. Over centuries Christians have combined elements of both stories into one story.  This unified story has been retold and celebrated in carols, choirs and liturgical readings for so long  that it's impossible to separate them.  This unified story has become the Christmas story.  The first three chapters of Genesis contain at least two, and some scholars say three, different stories of creation. Since they aren't the same, does that mean they're not true? Something significant happened. Because we're here.

When my wife and I got back in our car after that incredible concert, I was still filled with whatever is "more than just music."  I was filled with the very heart of Christmas.  In that moment what I didn't believe about any of it didn't matter at all. And I looked at her and said, "Some of this is true." And in some sacred place in me, that doesn't demand certainty, all of it was true. I think Frederick Buechner is right, that in spite of it all at the heart of Christmas is "the possibility of hope."

So now will I stop picking music apart?  As long as there are screeching sopranos, strings that are out of tune and "canned carols", I will keep picking music apart. Will I stop picking Christmas apart? Can reindeer fly? Can I tune out current events?  Do I enjoy the company of every single person I see? I can't stop picking Christmas apart. But what I can do is to remember that in its essence, Christmas love, joy and peace is not only possible, but is real for those who choose, in spite of it all, to embrace them. No, I never saw a Baby in a manger, but in  a United Methodist Church that night in Chattanooga, Tennessee, I found  Him in my heart.  And for me, "this is of all things the thing that is most worth believing."

Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays?

Every year we have to endure "the war on Christmas."  We not only hear about "the commercialization of Christmas" by the retailers, but we hear about specific retailers.  Starbucks, for example,  has come under fire in recent years for the logo on their coffee cups.  Other retailers have drawn fire for similar things.

But one of the most powerful aspects of "the war on Christmas" is many Christians' disapproval of greeting each other with "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." The reasoning seems to be "Happy Holidays is secular and excludes Jesus, whereas Merry Christmas is the only acceptable way to be true to the real Christmas story, the Biblical stories in the Gospel narratives". The most important story that concerns them, of course, is  the birth of Jesus, the Son of God.

Your particular preference in choosing a greeting is whether you want to be more inclusive or more exclusive. "Happy Holidays", which includes a multitude of other celebrations, also includes Christmas.  "Merry Christmas" although I will argue has become more inclusive as well, is more exclusive than "Happy Holidays".Those who use "Merry Christmas" thinking it is the "Biblical" and "Christian" greeting, need to look at the history and the current trends.  A recent poll suggests that 55% of Americans no longer consider Christmas to be a religious holiday.  So just like "Happy Holidays", "Merry Christmas" now refers to a multitude of celebrations and traditions that do not necessarily have anything to do with the birth of Jesus. And before someone considers Christmas to be the exclusive territory of Christians, he needs to look at the history. Centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ, Druids celebrated the Winter Solstice each year around December 21st. To celebrate this annual cosmic event, they used evergreen trees, holly and mistletoe as symbols of ever lasting life. Keep in mind too that the celebration of Christmas on December 25th didn't happen until the 3rd century AD when Pope Julius 1 made the official proclamation. Early Christians assimilated the customs and the traditions of the Druids into their own religious celebration. Then Christians quickly began to treat the season as if it was their own good idea.

This is not an exhaustive list, but you'll get the idea.  "Holiday" celebrations in November, December and January include Thanksgiving, the Solemnity of Mary, St. Basil's Day, Twelfth Night, St. Nicholas Day, Epiphany, Advent Hanukkah, Winter Solstice (Midwinter), Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Kwanzaa, Mawlid el-Nabi, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. So if you meet someone on the street and  you're not sure which particular celebration is theirs, then "Happy Holidays" includes them all.  There's nothing wrong with saying "Merry Christmas",  but this greeting is less inclusive than "Happy Holidays." If you want to be even more inclusive and say, for example, "Happy  Hanukkah" to your Jewish friend, just be aware that she celebrated the eight days of Hanukkah this year from December 2 through December 10th.  But she may still appreciate the effort. "Happy Holidays", though,  includes her without knowing the details of Hanukkah. "Merry Christmas", except for the recent secularization of the term, doesn't include her at all. It also makes you one of a million who don't seem to know there's a difference. It always feels good to people to be included.

I know Christians, however, whose attitudes are  "This season is Christmas and I'll say 'Merry Christmas'  because it's Christmas and if people have a problem with that, then they can just get over it."  If you say that, they probably won't  get over Christmas, but they may get over you.

"He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight--
Happy Christmas to all or Happy Holidays would be at least slightly more inclusive without excluding either Christians or those who drink Starbucks coffee."

Are you ready for the holidays?

I'm sure that I've been asked, "Are you ready for the holidays?" many times before. But this year I have noticed the question more than ever.  So when something gets my attention or intrigues me, I start assigning meaning to it, or I at least try to find the meaning that's intended.

I would understand  "Are you ready for the holidays?" in the days leading up to Thanksgiving or the days immediately following Thanksgiving.  But isn't asking "Are you ready for the holidays?" the week before Christmas a little like at 30,000 feet the flight attendant asking you , "Are you ready for your flight?"

I can appreciate the fact that the speaker is really only making polite conversation and not probing for intense personal information.  But still...

I've been told that the question means "Are you finished with all  your Christmas shopping?"   or "Are you prepared for all the family that's coming in?"  But if that's the case, why not ask something like, "Are you finished with all your Christmas shopping?" or "Are you prepared for all the family coming in?"  I've also been told that "the holidays" in the context of this question means Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  Since our family is scattered from coast to coast, we have learned that "Christmas" happens the weeks and days that include Thanksgiving through mid-January.  If we waited  until Christmas Eve or Christmas Day to celebrate Christmas, we would have totally missed "the holidays." I think "the holidays" is an attitude more than a time and place.  For me, for many years, "the holidays" certainly hasn't been December 24th and 25th.

I have a suggestion.  When you run into a friend, acquaintance or stranger during "the holidays" and you're searching for something to say, instead of the knee-jerk "Are you ready for the holidays?" ask instead "Are you enjoying the holidays?".  Obviously, now instead of asking her about something that has not yet happened, you are asking about something that is already  in progress.  So instead of conversation about Christmas day, perhaps the person will respond about the concert that she attended or the holiday gathering that happened the previous weekend.  Or maybe, even the week before Christmas, she will share what happened with her family at Thanksgiving.   For me there is a world of difference between, "Are you ready for the holidays?"  and "Are you enjoying your holidays?"  Of course with that latter question, he may say, "No, I'm not."  and he goes into some detail about how things are not going well at all.  Unfortunately, Christmas" can be very difficult for some people. If' that's the case,at that point the conversation has been ratcheted up to another level. I suggest you use the opportunity to listen and to offer your love and kindness. You never know when such a conversation is the only TLC the person is going to get that day.

So far I've been patient with people who have asked me, "Are you ready for the holidays?" but if somebody asks me on Christmas Eve, I'll be tempted to say, "No, but I've got a year to get ready." And if,  while in the air, the flight attendant asks me "Are you ready for the flight?"  I'll say, "Ready as I'll ever be. But please ask the pilot and let  me know what he says". Prayer works wonders.

My Most Unforgettable Christmas

I grew up in affluence and abundance.  At the time I never considered my family to be wealthy and by some measures we weren't wealthy.  My father owned his own concrete construction company, but he never took more than about $20,000 a year out of the business for our family to live on. And even in 1960 dollars, that wasn't much money.  But beyond that, I was wealthy in every way possible. My maternal grandmother was the widow of someone would have been a self-made millionaire if he had lived. But in his fifties, he died with a brain tumor. However, he left enough wealth in real estate that my grandmother  and my aunt never worked another day in their long lives. Well at least they never worked because they needed income.  I never knew who inherited what, but my entire extended family benefited from the windfall.  That grandmother's sister, my great aunt, owned a lot of property around Enterprise, Alabama some of which she inherited from her brother-in-law. She also owned a tire and boat shop in downtown Enterprise that my grandfather established. He convinced his sister-in-law, who was then a school principal in Birmingham, to come home and help him run the business. When he died, she and an uncle continued the business.  Besides her Enterprise customers, my great aunt's  customer base included a steady stream of GIs with Enterprise's proximity to Ft. Rucker, a US Army base.  It was a thriving concern.  A few  years before he died, my grandfather bought a house at Laguna Beach, Florida.  That house was available for all the kinfolks and select friends to use for the nearly fifty years it was in the family. If we needed a place to stay at the beach, we just drove 90 miles to the beach house and opened the door. When we got ready to go on the beach, we walked out the front door, crossed Highway 98 and we were on the beach.

My fraternal grandmother was not financially wealthy, but she owned a farm of many acres  And she worked this farm. She grew every imaginable variety of fruit and vegetables.  When we wanted fresh fruit and vegetables, we drove out the Damascus road and picked it. "Help yourself."  My grandfather, her x-husband owned a cattle farm out the New Brockton Highway.  Our freezer stayed stocked with a side of beef. "And on that farm he had a" pecan orchard and a pond.  If we needed pecans, when in season we just found a sack and filled it up with pecans.  There were fig trees in his yard as well. If we wanted fish for supper, we drove to the pond with poles and bait and caught them. We caught bream, bluegill, shell cracker and large mouth bass.  We took them home and dressed them, and mother battered and fried them. We feasted on fresh fish, grits and cornbread (the kind that's flat and brittle on the edges that some call hoecakes).

I grew up in affluence and abundance.

My immediate family and maternal family all congregated at my grandmother's house at about five o'clock pm on Christmas Eve.  The evening and night for about twenty five aunts, uncles and cousins involved feasting on food that included sandwiches, cakes, pies, puddings and cookies. And someone always made boiled custard. My great aunt played as we sang carols. My parents, aunts and uncles talked and laughed while the rest of us played together. My aunt got out the eight millimeter projector, loaded it with a reel and showed old family movies and a black and white "The Night Before Christmas."  It was a crowd favorite. And then all twenty five people spent the night there or across the street at my great aunt's house waiting for Santa to come.  At around ten o'clock, Santa rang a bell to tell all the children to go to sleep. If it's not enough magic for Santa Claus to visit every home in the world in one night, in our tradition he visited them all twice! We knew Santa was real, because you couldn't see him even if you tried. Looking back at what happened on Christmas morning is embarrassing. Besides finding wrapped and tagged presents that the parents, grandparent, uncles and aunts gave to each cousin, Santa left an abundance of unwrapped presents under the fireplace and the tree spilling out onto the floor. It took over an hour to open everything.

I don't remember very many of the presents, but I wouldn't take anything for those times with my family at 309 W. College Street, Enterprise, Alabama. I still have all of my siblings and all of my cousins except one; everyone else is gone. The house belongs to someone else. If I ever happened to be in Enterprise on Christmas Eve, we would stay at the Hampton Inn. Ho Ho Ho.

And yet my most unforgettable Christmas was not one of those Christmases.  My most unforgettable Christmas was the Christmas my wife's mother died, the Christmas of the ice storm in Jasper, Alabama. My mother-in-law died late on December 23, 1998. After a bizarre series of events, on Christmas eve my wife's entire family was together in her mother's house with no electricity and no food.  In the south, church folks bring food when someone dies. But they had no power with which to cook it and no way to get there on icy roads if they did cook it. Our only light was from the gas heater, a lantern and some candles. Our shadows danced on the walls and ceiling in the dimly lit room. But along with our poverty and our grief,  there was a feeling of connectedness and of mutual love. Our seventeen year old son and his "girl cousins" were playing with the flame of a candle when he looked up at his mother and said, "This ain't half bad."  And my wife put her head on my shoulder and cried. On Christmas morning there were no presents and no breakfast. I was able to get to a friend's house who had a pan of lasagna for us to share.   Lasagna had never been more appreciated or tasted so good.

I have no guilt about the way I grew up. It was the family I was born into and we lived with the means we had earned and been given. Those Christmases in Enterprise were very special and the recent ones with our granddaughter have been divine.  But it's the Christmas when we had nothing that I remember most fondly, because in our poverty we experienced the very heart of Christmas. On that first Christmas in Bethlehem, there was a baby in a manger in a barn with his parents. They had only each other. Then  there were angels and shepherds and wise men bearing expensive gifts. There was extravagant abundance. But years later when Mary was asked "What is the most memorable part of your son's birth?"  I would  guess that it wasn't the gold, the frankincense or the myrrh. I would like to think that she said, "Angels chanting is pretty remarkable, but my favorite part of that incredible time was being in a barn with a lantern, my husband and my son."

Whatever you have or don't have this Christmas, whatever you can afford to give or not give, whoever is left of your family and friends, whatever good memories you can muster,  I hope that sometime on Christmas Eve, you hug your spouse or your dog or your cat and say to him, "This ain't half bad."

The Time Value of Anything

"Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe.  He who understands it, earns it. He who does not understand it, pays it."  Albert Einstein

Time does things to things.  You've heard it said that "time heals all wounds."  I have found that that is not necessarily true.  But one thing's for sure, the pain of the wound usually diminishes significantly over time.  This depletion of pain applies to physical as well as emotional wounds. Physical pain can subside quite quickly, but grief, insults and other emotional injuries can linger for years.

In 1982 an insurance agent changed my life.  Without a doubt he changed my financial future, but he changed me. He was trying to get my wife and me to invest in a monthly accumulation program called a tax-sheltered annuity (TSA) through the hospital where she worked.  The program was already approved by human resources. All she had to do was sign her name for the automatic pay period withdrawals to start. On a financial calculator, he showed me something that through nineteen years of formal  education  I had never seen.  He showed me the time value of money(TVM). The agent showed me what $25.00 per pay period  could accumulate to over our financial lifetimes. We didn't have a lot to invest,  but we could consider $25.00.

In this case, he used thirty years for the future value computation.  Because his program involved managed investments, there was no fixed interest rate. So he showed me this accumulation at a hypothetical  8, 10  and 12%. I found the results of his calculation to be remarkable. At 8% interest, our $25.00 would accumulate to $54,761,00. At 10% the result was $123, 685.00. At 12% over thirty years, our $25 per pay period would accumulate to $191,592.00. The only variable in these three scenarios, a difference of about $140,000.00, was the rate of return. In an instant I understood why everybody in town was after my $25.00. Turns out it was worth quite a bit. I understood why investors invest and why they took risks.  My wife signed the form.  Although she worked no extra minutes or hours, and with no extra effort on her part, the money began to accumulate just as the insurance agent said it would.

But as I said, time does things to everything. Time is so important that through his General Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein demonstrated time to be a dimension  of space along with height, width and length. This phenomenon he called space-time. He said that the sun's gravity, for example, doesn't attract the earth like a magnet.  The earth falls through the fabric of space-time to make its annual pilgrimage around the sun. This phenomenon repeats itself with every heavenly body in our solar system, our galaxy and throughout our vast universe.

Time does things to relationships. In a significant relationship such as marriage, each person invests love and trust. Over time that love and trust grows. Each person not only makes contributions, but can also make emotional withdrawals. Just as with money, the contributions need to exceed the withdrawals so the emotional resources are not depleted.  It's important too that each partner is making both the contributions and the withdrawals for the relationship to be viable and healthy over time. I've been to some very sad 50th anniversary celebrations. Marriage shouldn't be an endurance test. It's possible for a bad marriage to last too long. Not everything gets better with age.  Our miserly neighbor had hoarded hundreds of cases of food in his basement. When his daughter and son-in-law opened them after his death, there was nothing in them. The boxes were still there, but they were empty.  I read once that if you want an expensive wine, buy a five dollar bottle and leave it alone for fifteen years. But even fine wine can turn to vinegar over time. One marriage can grow into a sheltering tree and another become an empty shell. It all depends on what the couple invests in the relationship over the years.

Four years after the fateful conversation with the insurance agent, I had become so fascinated with the concept of the time value of money that I passed the Series 7 stockbroker exam. I became a financial advisor with IDS/ American Express Financial Services. During that time a local high school home economics teacher invited me every year to speak to her class. What did I talk about? TVM.   I showed her students  how to read a compound interest table. I showed them what $10 per week could accumulate to over forty years with three hypothetical interest rates. No one ever seemed amazed, but at least they saw the concept many years before I did.

So if you and the person you love invest wisely over time, The Golden Years can be a reality. But you need to get started while time is on your side. Compounding only works when something's there.

Finding Your Wild Self

“I'll tell you right now, the doors to the world of the wild self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door; if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much that you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.”  Women Who Run With the Wolves. Clarissa Pinkola Estés


It is normally not a good thing when "wild" is applied to a human being. If a  teenager goes wild or a forty year old man goes wild, if someone throws a wild party, then the meaning of wild is negative.  Obviously, this is not the definition of "wild" that Estés is using. Her definition of "wild" as it pertains to human beings, women in particular, is much different.  Likewise with wolves.  Being "thrown to the wolves" is not a good thing.  "A wolf in sheep's clothing" has negative connotations.  But Estés has great admiration and respect for wolves. Their wild nature is not something to be feared or to loath, but is something to be admired and emulated. I like to think by "wild self" she is referring to our true self, our true nature, the person we were created to be.

With that clarification, we can begin to understand the meaning of her words. 

"I'll tell you right now" says that she is speaking from a perspective of deep conviction; she is not mincing words. With each subsequent, emphatic statement she builds her case  for finding the deeper, full life. "The doors to the world of the wild self are few but precious." In other words when life opens one of these "doors to the wild self" we would do well to walk through it. And when you look at her doors we see that they are doors we all have experienced.   Do we have deep scars?  Of course we have deep scars.  Do we have old, old stories?  Of course we have old, old stories. Have we loved the sky and the water so much that we couldn't bear it? If not the sky and water, we have looked up into a canopy of stars and burst with fullness as we pondered the grandeur of creation and our own relative insignificance.  Or we have witnessed the birth of a child and almost passed out for sheer gratitude and joy.  There have been those who did actually pass out.

So all of us are qualified to approach these doors and walk through them.  What is this deeper life? Estés doesn't say.  It's as if she's telling us that we will know it when we get there. I'm quite sure that she would say this "deeper life" is unique for each of us. I'm also quite sure that she is suggesting we don't have to die to find this deeper, full life.  This fullness is possible in the here and  the now.

Estés says that through these doors we can yearn for a "sane life."  Sane compared to who? To what? There is a Broadway rock musical called Next to Normal. The main character is Diana, a bipolar wife and mother. Toward the end of the musical Diana's daughter says  to her boyfriend that she will probably never be normal, but she can be next to normal. And she decides that "next to normal" is okay,  So now we can walk through doors that we all possess toward a deeper, fuller life that is at least next to normal. And all of this is possible because we  have discovered our wild self.

So touch that deep scar. Remember that old, old story. Imagine that sky full of stars. Open the doors that they reveal  and walk through them. You may seem insignificant in the scheme of things, but you are wild and precious. No one has your scars.  No one knows your stories. Only you can live life to your fullest. Wild is not just for forty year olds. But there's no need to buy a red sports car.







  . 

S'mores

The famous conductor Arturo Toscanini discovered the music of Samuel Barber when Barber sent him the score to his Adagio for Strings.  Barber was offended when he immediately returned the score with no comment.  Later Barber would learn that Toscanini returned it because he had already memorized the entire score. Toscanini premiered Barber's orchestral arrangement in 1938, two years after Barber had composed it for string quartet.  Barber's work was an immediate musical and commercial success and remains one of the most performed American  works worldwide.

I discovered Adagio for Strings in September of 1971. When I entered music school at the Enterprise State Junior College, the only music I knew was what I had learned at church, listened to on my family's stereo or heard on the radio. The "music suite" at the junior college was a large rehearsal room with a  grand piano and one other room.  It was that "other room" where I spent most of my time. Imagine a small, narrow walk-in closet. The contents were simple--three turntables with three sets of of headphones and a wall full of albums. I would think that some of my assignments included quality time in that room, but I didn't have to be told to go there.  If I wasn't in class or in the library, I was in that listening room. One fall afternoon, I randomly pulled from the shelf an album of the music of Samuel Barber. Holding the album with my palms I  reverently placed it on the turntable careful not to put my fingers on the grooves, and I dropped the needle for the first time on his Adagio for Strings.

I've been married to the same woman for over forty one years and I love her with all my heart. Our romance, however, was not "love at first sight." The night we met, we were mutually unimpressed. By a year and a half later we had worked up enough love to exchange meaningful "I dos". We did. And we still do.  But that afternoon at ESJC as that needle dutifully followed the groove on that record, and as those vibrations were transferred to my headphones and my ears as music,  my world stood still. It stands still as I listen to it now forty six years later. Different music medium. Different headphones. Same ears and same incredible music. 

If I didn't already adore the music, I discovered a few years ago a recording of Agnus Dei.  This is an a cappella arrangement of the piece which I learned the composer himself had arranged for unaccompanied choir and published in 1967. Now there was text to accompany the incredible music. And it was not just text, but meaningful text,  text extracted from that great body of liturgy know as the Latin Mass. "Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem. Miserere nobis." (ahnus dayee, kwee towlees pehkahtah moondee, donah nobese pahchem. meesayrayray nobese).   Translated: "Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace. Have mercy upon us. Have mercy." But the words are not sung sequentially; they are sung simultaneously. As each voice part carries its text, the text is different for each voice part.  Even before  the listener knows any translation or  meaning, the effect is magnificent.  Then when  "grant us peace" is  sung simultaneously with "have mercy upon us", for example,  both phrases take on new meaning.  The combined words mean so much more than the sum of its parts. When marshmallows are toasted over  an open fire and squeezed between two graham crackers loaded with Hershey's chocolate, it becomes much more than the individual ingredients. And can you separate the s'mores from the chill, the crackling of the fire, the ascending sparks and the laughter? Who would want to. The first recipe by the Girl Scout leader Loretta Scott Crew in 1927 called the concoction "some mores".  Whoever later combined the words  created a catchy masterpiece. 

I pride myself on being able to recognize many different aspects  of music. I notice things about music that most people have no interest in knowing. Since I recognize and retain these aspects of music rather quickly, what happened last week came as somewhat of a shock. Over the past forty six years  I've listened to Adagio for Strings and Agnus Dei  hundreds of times.  Last week on YouTube I discovered and listened to a performance of Agnus Dei that included the vocal score.  For the very first time, I viewed the score as the choir sang. And right then and there before my very eyes was something my ears had never noticed in all my years of listening.  Samuel Barber based his famous Adagio for Strings on Gregorian chant. It was immediately easy to see and to hear how Barber's Agnus Dei was chant, but I also then understood that those strings in the original orchestral version  had been singing Gregorian chant all along. The melodic steps and small leaps could not be denied. And then Google confirmed what had been there all along. With no neumes or Latin text,  Barber had written chant sung by human voices for lifeless instruments--violins, violas, cellos and basses.  Not only was the vocal score transformed, but the orchestral score as well. Thirty one years separated the strings from the voices, but now neither can be separated. And why would I  want to?

I  excelled academically and musically during my first two years of music school at ESJC. And those six quarters propelled me to ten semesters of music education in two more institutions. But after seven years of music school, in so many ways I can trace a significant part of my education to that small room in Enterprise, Alabama containing  those headphones, turntables and record albums. None of them work without the other. 

Adagio. Agnus Dei. They even sound alike. You can't separate them.  And I dare you to try.