My second thought about .. rejoicing .. always .. is: music. Sing .. even if you can't sing. Sing even when you don't want to sing. The one who sings, prays twice, says a proverb. A Holly Near song that helped me get through a difficult time went "We are a gentle, angry people .. and we are singing .. singing for our lives." Our prayer for church musicians, in the prayer book, says. " Be present with your servants who seek through art and music to perfect the praises offered by your people on earth; and grant to them even now glimpses of your beauty.." In music we can glimpse God's beauty.

So here is a Christmas present for you, from St. Thomas', and particularly from Tim Hagy, our music director. We've started a Taize worship service on third Sundays, in the evening, and people have been asking what that means. Taize is an ecumenical monastery in France whose way of worship attracts thousands of pilgrims every year, many of them young people, and that monastery has a particular, meditative way of singing together. Tim is going to teach us the Taize way of singing the Gloria .. maybe the most basic hymn of praise, of rejoicing, of saying thank you, in our liturgy. A joyful Christmas to you, and happy new year.