I Look from Afar

for Anastasia

Five Advent Things Including a Poem and a Song

Few things inspire me more than mystery-veiled Sewanee, Tennessee. As I’ve come into whatever stage of life this is, breaths of singing wind keep moving that veil in flutters, offering a peek at what’s hidden. What is there is all “ripples and threads” of a woven cosmos, as Smith would say, where coincidences and full-circle experiences are so common that memory feels like present reality and there is virtually no distinction between past, present, and eternal.

Or maybe those particular breaths originating from Sewanee are not, in fact, outward breaths but inhalations for a long melodic phrase, drawing me back with the breath to a foundation where certain things remain unfinished, as in those dreams of revisiting, needing to bring things to completion. The tests I never studied for, finding myself about to appear onstage not knowing my part. Or my favorite all-encompassing nightmare: making the drive to Sewanee from Georgia well into midlife as (once again) a matriculating freshman, wondering how I’ll fit in with the young crowd, never having paid my bills, and realizing the semester is suddenly ending and I forgot to attend a class I’d registered for, while wandering through the matrix of Gothic buildings trying to find a classroom (for what was probably a math class).

(The fluttering veil image came from something I read recently, but I forget where. Thanks to a mystery someone for this.)

1. Sewanee Lessons and Carols 1989

Before the processional, we huddled together in suspenseful hush at the western entrance, behind the back rows at All Saints’ Chapel. Still and expectant as wisemen in our cassocks and surplices, we each held a candle and looked up like a nest of baby birds toward Dr. Delcamp. Our esteemed choral director, transfigured through the glow of our candles, stood atop a tall platform for the benefit of vertically challenged choristers like me. The chapel was lavish with greenery and roses, both real and assembled from ginkgo leaves. A sacristan stood ready to swing her brass incense thurible, but the penetrating spice was already filling the rear of the nave.

When the chairs had ceased their squeaking, and the full congregation was as still as we were, Dr. Delcamp nodded to the chorister ready with pitch pipe. Like a good soldier she nodded back to him and played a reliable C. He raised his hands slightly in preparation and looked at the tenor soloist, who began to sing, unaccompanied, “I look from afar!” Only the tenor began his Palestrina solo not on a C but on a D.

As a short soprano, I was standing directly beneath our maestro and could easily see the veins protruding as his jaw began to clench. Dr. Delcamp raised his hands high enough for those in the back, and began. The choir broke out into singing in four parts, “And lo, I see the power of God coming, and a cloud covering the whole earth.”

The cloud was thick indeed with some unidentifiable Eastern microtonal harmony while Dr. Delcamp’s teeth grinded so visibly I feared one might just splinter and spurt out right there into my highly-flammable candlelit hair. Some of us chose the pitch pipe’s selection, and some went with the tenor, while others hedged their bets somewhere in between. Eventually we arrived at something of a consensus right about where the Shepherd of Israel begins leading Joseph like a sheep.

2. Sewanee 2025

Our son Asa, a sophomore, is singing his second Lessons and Carols service here, and we are full of joy that his father can be here to experience it for the first time.

A female student, president of the Order of the Gown, reads Mary’s words, which will then be sung in a rousing Stanford Magnificat setting by the choir accompanied by brass:

He hath put down the mighty from their seat; and hath exalted the humble and meek.

He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent empty away.

Like most of the people around me appear to be, I am rich. I always have been, even at my poorest. Shouldn’t I be sent empty away?

Sam, Liz, Anastasia, Cameron, Nick, Cindy, Carl, Giles, Annette, Mary Jo, Carolyn, too many to name, are there, and we are all young again. Even in the congregation, all my old choir mates are around me, joining in the carols and anthems, even, especially, those who have died.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost

as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

photo of All Saints’ Chapel, the University of the South, Sewanee, TN, by Buck Butler

3. He hath exalted the humble and meek

I give thanks for a brief bout of insomnia that led me to read this article by Melissa Dalton-Bradford. She has experienced the grief of losing a child but fights to keep even her worst pain in perspective, in the interest of faithful service, of obedience. After the above reflections on Mary’s words, I needed some glimpse into the realities of “the humble and meek.” Aside from these promises, there is nothing romantic or comforting about these realities. We all know this, but Advent is the time to remind ourselves, especially, if I might suggest, this Advent. I urge you to read her piece.

4. Advent 2025

Every morning I invite you 
as if a stranger
into my heart
your home 

I invite you there 
to remind myself 
it is already your home 

to remind myself 
you are welcome
because I so often forget

you are welcome 
because you welcomed me
even though I would harm you

you welcomed me 
without fear
for in love
there is no such thing

There was no room in the inn
Is there room in my heart
for the stranger?

Remind me 
my heart 
is your home

and the stranger

is you.

5. My favorite thing so far this Advent season is my nephew Warren Budd, son of Emily and Candler, singing In the Bleak Midwinter:

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