Matters of Interpretation

People need music. It’s built in to us.

We can stop gathering for choir practice, we can make a rule that we will only sing in the sanctuary softly behind masks so that we don’t spew potentially fatal aerosols all over the air commons, we can make a thing out of those craftily edited Zoom virtual choral numbers …

And the tunes will still get stuck in our heads.

This is how we’re made, I think.

“Song with us.”

Image: “Valdemarkorset,” Tore Danielsson, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons –

N.B. When I went looking for a Celtic cross – what I sometimes think of as a “Presbyterian” or “Scottish” cross – for this post I found out that it’s now also being used as a symbol for white nationalism. I think Our Lady of Luke 1:46-55 would disapprove – by which I mean, if she had a hammer, she’d smash a cross like that to smithereens, along with the movement it’s being culturally appropriated to stand for. So now, apparently, if I want to be clear, I have to make explicit I’m using the featured image of a Celtic / Presbyterian / Scottish cross (which in this particular case is evidently located somewhere in Sweden) with anti-white-nationalist-party intent. In the spirit of the season, which is to say in the spirit of the inevitable contestation of symbols in an inevitably politicized speech environment. Well, then … Bring it on. I’m good with words. So is Our Lady.