All is Well

“All is well; all is well. Angels and men rejoice.” When our choir sang this beautiful song on December 8, I know I was not the only one deeply moved. While the words offer comfort and cheer, the melody somehow stirs feelings of melancholy. The combination of these seemingly disparate attitudes creates deep emotion.

I think of the scene in one of the Lord of the Rings movies when the hateful and wicked Denethor sends his son off to his almost-certain death while he himself sits to a personal banquet and orders the hobbit Pippin to sing for him. The sweet and plaintive notes of the song are juxtaposed with scenes of battle and destruction. It’s not unlike the way “What a Wonderful World” is played over scenes of war in Good Morning Vietnam.

For myself, as I listened to the proclamation that “all is well,” my mind went back to scenes from the past year: birthdays, family reunions, work days; but also hospital rooms, car trouble, funeral parlors. Life is just a mish-mash of the beautiful and the terrible. The poet W.H. Auden noted that suffering always takes place alongside ordinary events of our lives. He says that “it takes place/While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along” (“Musee des Beaux Arts”). Similarly, while some of us are enjoying wonderful, even miraculous, joy, others are in great pain.

We have seen this truth in our own community even in recent days. It seems to me that the beauty of “All is Well” is tied up in the great need we have for peace and solace. It’s because there is so much pain in the world that the message brought by a sleeping baby centuries ago is so poignant.

--Sherry Poff