Skills you can’t put on your resume

#1 Ability to change a diaper with one hand (this skill is disappearing rapidly)

#2 Ability to detangle nearly any knot

#3 Knowing all the words to two or three or four verses of most common Christmas carols

Well, at least these don’t fit on my usual professional resume. What skills do you have that don’t really fit on your resume?

I grew up singing Christmas carols with my mother. She has been in lots of choirs, especially church choirs, over her life time. She has a pretty voice and is not snobby about singing. When our family went on long car trips, we would always sing together. One December night, probably in 1984, the two of us were driving home in a snowstorm through a windy canyon. We tried to stop at an inn, but there was no room. Seriously. We drove very slowly and sang all the Christmas carols we knew very loudly. Good thing we know a lot of them. Her more than me even. Eventually we caught up to a snow plow and followed it into town safely.

This last Sunday before meeting for worship, I joined a few other Friends for singing Christmas carols. Our meeting has regular hymn singing before meeting for worship on second and fourth Sundays, but in December, we sing every week, focusing on Christmas songs. This year, I have been working on learning to sing the alto line on hymns, which is more suited to my voice, but since my mother is a soprano, I only learned the melodies as a child. So far, I can do it if I have another alto to listen to and if I already know the words.

At one point the pianist, my Friend Elizabeth, told us briefly about the Christmas she spent in Iraq in 2001. I recalled the year when the U.S. invaded Panama on December 20, 1989. I was living in Mexico at the time. On the main street of Oaxaca there was a public notice board. The week after Christmas the board was filled with an editorial statement asking for prayers for the people of Panama “quienes pasaron la Noche Buena velando sus muertos en vez del nacimiento del Niño Santo.” (who stayed up all night on Christmas Eve mourning their dead instead of celebrating the birth of the Holy Child.) Elizabeth turned to this hymn, reminding us that we are all, each of us, “captive Israel.”

O Come, O Come Emmanuel!

O come, O come, Emmanuel!
Redeem thy captive Israel,
That into exile drear is gone
Far from the face of God’s dear Son.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, thou Branch of Jesse! Draw
The quarry from the lion’s claw;
From the dread caverns of the grave,
From nether hell, thy people save.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, O come, thou Dayspring bright!
Pour on our souls thy healing light;
Dispel the long night’s lingering gloom,
And pierce the shadows of the tomb.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, thou Lord of David’s Key!
The royal door fling wide and free;
Safe guard for us the heav’nward road,
And bar the way to death’s abode.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, O come, Adonai,
Who in thy glorious majesty
From that high mountain clothed with awe
Gavest thy folk the elder law.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

I didn’t learn this one at home, but the melody of it is haunting me still today.


UPDATE: After I posted this it occurred to me that perhaps it was not as obvious to everyone as it seemed to me why this is such an important hymn for Quakers.

Emmanuel is another name for Jesus, implying the element of God within each of us.

If each of us is “captive Israel”, that means that each of us is captive to the Empire, whether that be ancient Egypt or Caesar or the modern United States of America, or metaphorically the Empire of sin and death, of materialism and violence. This hymn reminds to rejoice because God will come to live with us, the Christ within shall free us from our captivity. It is an Advent hymn in the cycle of the Christian Church because it reminds us that we are still awaiting the birth of the Christ Child. We are still waiting to live fully in the kingdom of God. As Quakers we know experimentally that Christ has come and yet we know that we have not found Christ. Not really, not quite, not yet.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

Another post which contributed to my thinking on this topic from Heather Kirk-Davidoff.