(not necessarily in that order)
All the final details are in place.
Now it’s time to rest, relax, and focus on feeling and looking our best for tonight’s performance.
I can hardly wait.
Oh, yeah! The performance is from 7:00-8:30pm (PDT) in the Temple of Light at Ananda Village.
Here’s the link if you’d like to watch it online: https://youtu.be/7RiSPCoTPfw
Tuesday I shared about singing all the Oratorio choir songs during our Easter Zoom Sing-Along, which was both great fun and deeply inspiring.
Now — finally! — I’ve got all the links and can share about two more opportunities to experience the Oratorio during this Holy season. The first option can viewed starting tomorrow night (Good Friday), while the other offering can be yours to enjoy whenever you like!
with photography and music by Swami Kriyananda
Good Friday, April 2 at 7:00pm (online)
https://www.ananda.org/video/christ-lives-an-illustrated-oratorio/
(It will also premiere directly on YouTube and Facebook.)
This version of Christ Lives! includes footage from a 2008 performance of the Oratorio in Palo Alto, California, together with a slideshow of photographs by Swami Kriyananda.
Swami describes how the music came to him as he meditated at sacred sites while on pilgrimage in the Holy Land in 1983. While there, he experienced the deep inspiration of Christ as a living presence and wrote each piece from that uplifted state of awareness.
The photographs were taken by Swami during that same pilgrimage.
An Oratorio composed, arranged, and narrated by Swami Kriyananda
Original 1984 Edition (archival) – Remastered
MP3 Download ~ $16.95
CLICK HERE for more information or to purchase
There are moments when I ask myself (somewhat impatiently, I have to confess) why the heck is it taking so long to find my bearings, settle in, and get back to full productivity.
After all, it’s been almost a month…!
And, after all, it’s almost Easter and there’s so much to do…!
But the truth of the matter is that I could not believe we were already at Palm Sunday last week. And I’m having a hard time fully comprehending that Easter is in less than a week.
A big part of why I’m feeling so disoriented and cast adrift is because — for the music ministry — the Easter season is usually anchored by our Good Friday performance of the Oratorio, Christ Lives. But this year there’s no choir, no Oratorio performance, no live Sunday service music at all.
I’m still plenty busy, but with a wide variety of tasks, many of which continue to evolve day to day in response to the ongoing crisis. It feels scattered and piecemeal, and I can’t help reflecting on how different it would be if this were any other year.
If it were a “normal” year, our rehearsals would have been steadily intensifying over the past four weeks. We would have been meeting regularly with soloists; arranging instrumental rehearsals; meeting with our sound and production teams; figuring out choir formations and seating diagrams. Tomorrow night would have been our final run-through before Friday’s performance. At this point we would be having a hard time thinking about anything but the Oratorio, as we more fully immersed ourselves in Christ’s life with every practice and rehearsal.
So, yeah. As we get closer to Easter, I guess the reality of it all is starting to hit home. I really, really miss it.