A prophet named Isaiah who lived in the eighth-century B.C. wrote, “Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing.”
Until then, however, the blind and the lame will have to do the singing. I count myself among them.
Here’s Andrea Bocelli in a magnificent rendering of “Adeste Fideles” (3:32).
Merry Christmas Rhymes with plague
ReplyDeleteto you and your family
:)
Thank you, Lady. We hope yours is merry too.
ReplyDeleteDid you happen to catch Bocelli's Central Park performance on PBS last week? Peggy and I talked a bit about what, if any, his blindness has upon his popularity, with Peggy saying it made no difference, and me saying it made a positive difference.
ReplyDeleteI did not see Bocelli's Central Park performance on PBS last week. I agree with you about the positive difference, because I think the sympathy factor enters into the mix.
ReplyDelete"I think the sympathy factor enters into the mix."
ReplyDeleteI think it's more complicated. For instance, when I watched him standing there in his white suit in Central Park before that huge audience, I thought that, here you have a guy who couldn't find his way off stage, yet his voice gives him the power to dominate the minds of all those thousands and thousands of people (in a pouring rain for much of the time) plus a TV audience that is surely hundreds of times more vast. Yet, this same inability that makes him a prisoner on that stage also makes him seem both approachable and inspirational. When I hear that voice, and look into those sightless eyes, I feel reverence. Here is someone who not only knows what it is to triumph over adversity, but to use it to advantage. In other words, I very much doubt that he could sing with such depth if he was lacking in maturity and wisdom, and it is easy to imagine that his blindness facilitated him gaining that maturity and wisdom.