Nailing the words to the songs for the Tableaux takes practice. There are phrases that could be interchangeable, yet it works best if the whole choir agrees. There is one run of healings that can trip us up, listing the blind, the lame, the deaf, and even the dead. Jesus brought miraculous changes for hurting people in his short three years of ministry. The song Mary Did You Know? is a poignant tribute to the wonders of this Child.
I have created little tricks to help me get it right. In that particular string, the alphabet comes in handy. Blind starts with b and is the first one.
"The blind will see, the deaf will hear, the dead will live again. The lame will leap, the dumb will speak the praises of the Lamb."
There are a slew of videos of people who have been given their sight. Not from complete darkness, but a lack of color. Special glasses augment vision enabling colorblind people to find red, purple, and green for the first time. Their reactions are deeply moving. They circle around in wonder. Soak in the beauty that has been there all along. Cover their mouths and weep.
One of the songs we do in the preschool gets us on our feet. The kids march in a circle like the Children of Israel around the walls of Jericho in the book of Joshua. The littler ones are fuzzy about the words but they all like a parade, especially one where you get to blow your pretend horn and collapse in a heap.
The verses are long enough that they make half a dozen revolutions around the room. A few of the kids take it as an opportunity to say hi to each other as they pass by. Because it has after all been eleven seconds since they last saw their friend.
"Hi!" they chirp to one another, and to me. It is tricky to interject greetings while I am leading the song but I cannot bear to let their friendliness go unanswered. There is no end to their delight at this chance encounter.
Why should there be?
Perhaps it is us oldsters who have forgotten to see that every walk around the sun is a fresh chance to smile at the people we love.
