A smaller Christmas, Day 16

Went back to work today, and was whipsawed between two big stories.

For most of the day, it was the Packers and the Bears, an NFL grudge match that goes back decades. Yet that football game — only a game, but so important to so many, so deeply etched in our culture — faded to insignificance when it came time for the story out of Newtown, Connecticut.

It was like going through a portal, stepping from the roar of the stadium into the silence of church, especially during the evening vigil at which the president spoke.

Trying to reconcile all that, I thought back to what a friend wrote Friday, as everyone tried to process the news out of Connecticut.

“Peace, love and art is the beacon.”

So here is a song about peace and love at Christmas.

A beacon cutting through the darkness.

“Glorious,” Melissa Etheridge, from “A New Thought For Christmas,” 2008. Also available digitally.

You hear echoes of the “Gloria” chorus of “Angels We Have Heard On High.”

“Love, love, love, it’s glorious.”

“Believe in heavenly, in heavenly peace.”