Angels Greet with Anthems Sweet

Last night Chup, Erin and I went up to Salt Lake City to see the Lower Lights Christmas show. We battled some traffic, some fog and biting cold to get there, but we fought on. Erin was bundled in about, oh, fourteen hundred layers. RSV STAY FREAKING AWAY.

When we got to the Masonic Temple where the concert was being held, I ran in the building with Erin while Chup parked. I was met by a very friendly security guard who told me about catching his fourth baby in the car on the way to the hospital.

"I kept thinking, I did this!" he told me with a puffed up bravado in his voice.

Never before have I loved birth stories more than I do now. All shapes and sizes. Christmas really is the celebration of a birth story and I've spent a lot of time this year thinking of Mary and Joseph having a baby in a barn, alone and quiet. It has survived the centuries as the epic birth story of all time.

The concert was entertaining, bouncing and humorous like always. As I sat on the top row, nursing Erin, with Chup by my side a few of the musicians started to play my favorite Christmas song, What Child is This?

It was an acoustic arrangement with a guitar, fiddle, banjo and steel guitar. All the sounds melted together in and out of moving solos of each instrument. And each solo was like a dramatic masterpiece.

I looked over at Chup and he was crying.

"This is the most beautiful thing I've ever heard," he whispered.

In our lifetime together I've only seen Chup cry a few times (the first time was when he broke up with me on New Years Day, bad move boyfriend, bad move).

Chup was feeling was the Holy Spirit. It's that clenching feeling that wraps around every atom in your body and electrifies it with joy. In that moment you are forced to cry or exclaim the old truth, Life is Beautiful! All of it. The hard and the soft. The cold and the hot. It's beautiful in all its shapes and sizes. And God loves us, all of us, there's no denying.

After the song was over we were told that particular piece had never been rehearsed. It was entirely improvised on the spot.

Thanks Lower Lights for being the messenger last night.