When the angels roared

  • lion-ornament.jpgOur Christ­mas tree this year is huge, and since it’s in my office, I’ve got a con­stant view of some of the inter­est­ing orna­ments I’ve picked up over the years. I was look­ing fondly at this one, a lit­tle repro­duc­tion of one of the stone lions out­side the art museum in Chicago that gets dec­o­rated with a wreath every Christ­mas. And I sud­denly remem­bered a Christ­mas­time in Chicago and how it took the lions at Brook­field Zoo to make every­thing right.

    Brook­field Zoo is the larger of the two zoos in Chicago, and when they adver­tised a chance to go out on a late Decem­ber evening and sing Christ­mas car­ols to the ani­mals, I jumped at the chance. I love zoos, and what could be bet­ter than shar­ing the joy of the sea­son with some of God’s won­der­ful vari­ety of creatures?

    Well, it wasn’t quite what I had hoped. For one thing, there was one bit of sim­ple math I had over­looked. Chicago plus Decem­ber plus night­time equals Icy-wicked Cold. A per­son can only bun­dle up in scarves and mit­tens so much, and those winds have a way of exploit­ing the small­est crack in your armor.

    For another thing, ani­mals don’t come out at night, or most of them don’t. They scut­tle into what­ever bed-like place they have and stub­bornly refuse to come out even when tourists have shelled out good money and are freez­ing their buns off. Go figure.

    But nei­ther of those prob­lems both­ered me nearly as much as what hap­pened when it was time to sing and the music sheets were handed around. That’s when it became appar­ent that the zoo’s stu­dious avoid­ance of the word ‘Christ­mas’ wasn’t just an acci­dent. What ‘car­ols’ were we going to raise on that win­try night to share glad tid­ings with all crea­tures great and small? Why, “Santa Claus is Com­ing to Town,” of course. “Win­ter Won­der­land” And, for the deeply spir­i­tual: “Let There Be Peace on Earth” — a per­fectly nice lit­tle song with absolutely no ties to Christ­mas whatsoever.

    I was sur­prised how bit­terly dis­ap­pointed I was. I sud­denly real­ized that I had been ridicu­lously naive. What, they were really going to allow a crowd in this day and age to raise their voices singing “Silent Night” or “Joy to the World” or “Hark, the Her­ald Angels Sing”? Had I for­got­ten that a zoo has to be polit­i­cally cor­rect at all times? How could they pos­si­bly allow us to utter such hate-speak as “Holy Infant, so ten­der and mild” or “Joy to the earth, the Sav­ior reigns”?

    But we were there and we had brought friends, so I tried to keep my sim­mer­ing anger to a min­i­mum and belted out the ditsy “hol­i­day” clas­sics as best I could. It wasn’t till we were slowly mak­ing our way out of the zoo that I heard what made it all right.

    The lions started roaring.

    Now, we’ve all heard the MGM lion give a lit­tle throat clear on-screen, and we’ve seen Tarzan movies that make it look scary only in a corny sort of way. But if you’ve ever been in the zoo when the lions really decide to open up, it’s just down­right hair-raising. The sound car­ries a very long way, and it’s just a BIG noise some­how. It breaks effort­lessly all around with­out seem­ing to obey the usual laws of acoustics, com­ing from ahead, behind, over here, over there. And when one lion gives voice, the oth­ers appar­ently don’t want to be out­done, and so the gigan­tic can­non­ades layer up and buf­fet the air.

    In this case, it made me very happy. Think­ing back on it now, look­ing at my tame lit­tle stone lion on the tree, it made me happy all over again. Because the lions put back some­thing that stu­pid and wrong-headed peo­ple had taken away, some­thing to fill the heart with shock and a sense of things hap­pen­ing. Where we had mewed out silly tunes as if snow­men and presents were the rea­son that Decem­ber 25 has been com­mem­morated for cen­turies, the lions’ voices broke through the night with news of Life too big to be con­tained, too impor­tant to be tame, too need­ful to be censored.

    That year, the lions sang the car­ols. I wish we silly, cold peo­ple would have had the nerve to do it, but how glad I am that some­one did.

    lion-ornament.jpg

    Related posts:

    1. A trip to the zoo
    2. Hang­ing out at the stone lions’ place
    3. Decem­ber 2
    4. Vivaldi weather
    5. Decem­ber 26

    December 21st, 2008 | Grace | 5 Comments |

5 Responses and Counting...

  • DebD 12.21.2008

    I have heard a lion roar once and, you’re right, it is a hair rais­ing chest pound­ing expe­ri­ence. And, they don’t just roar once and are done with it… this par­tic­u­lar lion went on for quite some time.

  • Mimi

    Oh my good­ness, what a fan­tas­tic mem­ory, and a lovely ornament.

  • Deb­bieK

    It kinda puts it all into per­spec­tive. God has such a won­der­ful way of mak­ing us laugh!

  • Grace

    It was kinda spe­cial, to be sure. I think the lions enjoyed it, too.

  • Tanya

    what awe­some crea­tures. what awe­some story.
    thanks for shar­ing it.

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