Sotto Voce

At Christmas people who share my faith celebrate the song of the angels:

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.

I have friends who find this anthem difficult to hear, for peace, certainly lasting peace, continues to elude us.

The century I grew up in is a case in point. It began with the “war to end all wars,” whose ending set in motion another war even more cosmic with even more death: 65 million soldiers and civilians died in WW II—only 18 million in the earlier conflict.

Almost as soon as the Second World War ended, the Cold War with its particular repressions and brutalities began, whose ending lifted the restraints on localized hatreds and ushered in the horrors of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and elsewhere. And then there are the targeted acts of political violence and the heart-break of school shootings that have continued into the present.

The angels seem to have gotten it wrong.

Because I identify as a Christian, I have to makes something of this problem. What helps, a little, is to note how selective the first announcement was. The angels did not sing their anthem to the court of Caesar Augustus, from which place it might have reached the world. They didn’t even sing to all the shepherds scattered around Bethlehem—just to a small group of them.

God, it seems, speaks clearly, but quietly. Sotto voce (“under the voice”) is the theater term for it, as when an actor grabs the audience’s attention by lowering her voice as she speaks.

God’s story is full of understatement.

The exodus in Moses’ day was a big deal for the Jews, but there is no mention of it in the annals of Egyptian history or anywhere else. King David, so prominent in Israel’s story, makes no appearance in the non-biblical accounts of his age apart from the etching of his name on a stone.

The pattern continued with Jesus. Only a small group saw him the morning of his birth (the “wise men” weren’t even there—they came at least a year later). Many people saw Jesus following his resurrection, but hundreds of thousands of others in Palestine did not— and not even the closest disciples witnessed the moment when his dead body was reanimated. John reports that Jesus performed many more miracles than were recorded—a vast number are simply lost to us.

Why doesn’t God speak more loudly? Why doesn’t he stage more media events or have his deeds documented more broadly?

One reason, I think, is his respect for us.

By speaking quietly God says, “I am not going to force myself upon you. If you want to hear me, you will. If you don’t, you won’t. I am going to permit you to make your choices, even if they are terrible ones.”

There is perhaps a second reason.

God wants us to learn to listen more carefully.

We hear the news reports and rightly grow disheartened because nearly all that is told us is troubling. But what of the millions of small acts of kindness and justice that we don’t so readily notice—say, the gentle word that may have been spoken to you this morning?

Journalist Nicholas Kristoff reports annually (more than fifteen times since the early 2000s) on improvements in the conditions of the world. Read last year’s account—“Even This Year Is the Best Time Ever to Be Alive” (New York Times 1.18.25)—for a boost.

And what about the trends that are too grand for us to take in because we are too easily distracted by the moment—say, the enormous increase in human health through science, which itself rose as Christian faith, with its Hebraic love for creation, made its way into Greek thinking, with its love for reasoning? I am alive today because of triple bypass heart surgery in 2018, a procedure that would have been unthinkable when World War I broke out.

I try to listen for the angels’ anthem in the events the news misses. And when I hear it, my hope rises. I tell myself that God isn’t finished with us.

And then I join the song by doing what I can to promote peace and good-will. I remind myself that my singing matters, even if no one hears it, even if it’s not pitch-perfect, even if it gains no traction. God hears it and smiles in anticipation of the grand future he has promised when, as Isaiah put it, “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.”