Advent at YDS

This week has seen a plethora of advent services.  The Berkeley service took place just following AIDS memorial day, when we had five parts of the AIDS quilt hanging up around the chapel.  The service was beautiful, solemn, candle-lit, with a glorious selection of advent music.  Dawn, Rebekah and I were called up to receive farewell greetings from the Berkeley communtiy.  It felt very strange - and very sad - to be saying goodbye so soon.

The YDS advent service, on the last night of teaching term, was one of the most extraordinary services I have ever been to. We pulled out all the stops. 

Everyone was dressed up in their Christmas finery.  The AIDS quilt had gone, but from the ceiling a blue gauze canopy hung, from which hundreds of stars had been carefully suspended.  Every musical group in the Div School made a contribution (male and female a cappella groups, chapel choir, gospel choir, soloists, organists, instrumentalists, jazz musicians).  There was dancing by every liturgical dancer in the Div School.  We had not one but both homiletics professors preaching, each wearing the bright purple and pink robes of the Riverside Church in New York.  It was a riot of colour, music, and movement - ecumenical worship at its most spectacular and its most moving.