though christmas is my favorite time of year, i feel apprehensive about our celebration this year. i look forward to being with my wife and children at the home of our daughter and her husband, who live about seven hours away from us. it has been nice not to have all the meal planning and preparation and all-out decorating that goes along with having our family christmas at our home. we can relax and let our daughter and her husband take care of all that work. we'll have a great time being together, opening our gifts, and having several days to talk about what's going on in our lives. we'll have delicious food and will eat too much of it, most likely.
the concern comes for several reasons. first, the spread of the new omicron covid variant threatens to exacerbate the cycle of isolation, infection, hospitalization, and death that we had hoped the vaccines would end. so many people still refuse to become vaccinated and fail to take the necessary precautions to slow the rate of infection. social activities that have resumed won't be curtailed, at least in our area of the country, and many will not wear masks. the community choir of which i am a member will still present our annual performance of the christmas portion of messiah, which were interrupted last year because of the pandemic. i am one of the two choir members who sings wearing a mask, and i am the only choir member who is socially distancing myself from the rest of the choir. i fear that the audience will be so large that social distancing will be impossible for them, turning our two presentations of the music into super-spreader events. i participate in these concerts with apprehension and question whether i should have participated at all.
this presentation of messiah has been stressful in other ways. i serve as our choir's treasurer, which ordinarily would not be a difficult job. my responsibilities are to account for the money that is donated by members of the community and to see that the professional musicians who make possible the choir's performances are paid. this year, the president of the choir had to undergo major heart surgery just before our last rehearsal, and she did not survive the surgery. we are heartbroken because of her death, which has cast a pall over this year's presentations. the other officer/board member and i must take care of her duties as well as our own as we grieve her loss along with her family and others in the community. more stress was created for me when the person who usually takes care of overseeing the preparation and printing of the programs was unable to do so, and those tasks became my responsibility at the last minute.
a few days ago, i found myself wishing that i had never agreed to serve as an officer of the choir or to sing in this year's performances. i thought to myself that life would be much simpler if i remained a member of the choir whose only responsibilities were to show up for rehearsals and performances or if i had used the fear of infection as a reason to skip this year's presentation. now that the first performance is done and i've heard the audience's appreciative comments, i realize that this is a holiday tradition that is important to many people. i see that the duties i performed were necessary and that it was worthwhile for me to shoulder them so that others didn't have to. in future years, it will be someone else's job to take care of the choir's finances and see that the programs are printed, but i should be grateful that i had the time and abilities to see that these jobs are done for now.
may we not allow the stress of seeing a job through to hide the end result from us. may we accept our turn to shoulder responsibility, knowing that others will relieve us in the future. may we know that today's tensions are not permanent, and accepting the feelings that go along with them as part of the fabric of life. may we see the whole and not just the parts. shalom.
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