2023 Advent Playlist
Advent is a mood.
Each year I try to curate a set of songs that evoke longing, anticipation, or the certain magic somethings that this season is about. (I’d write a clearer sentence there, but if the whole thing could be captured in a sentence I don’t suppose I’d be picking a playlist of ambiguously connected songs.) The point is, sometimes in order to do theology well, you gotta dig down a little below the surface of what words can easily say. It’s good for us sometimes to let the poets take over, to let them do their evocative work, throwing up mystical signal smoke that we have to decode with something besides the left sides of our brains. Each year I start fishing in January with the hope that by the time I get to Advent, I’ll have something to share. This year, it’s 27 songs, or just shy of two hours.
It’s more or less the same playlist on each of the services below. The order is pretty loose, so feel free to shuffle if you get tired of that opening few songs. (How could you?!?) As always, the advent playlist is best experienced in the kitchen, with a soup simmering on low. (You’re welcome to come listen in mine.) Or perhaps if it’s one of these bleak midwinter days where the world color palette goes to varieties of gray, then I suppose an agonizingly slow drive might do.
You get the picture.
Until he comes,
Steven
Steven Hovater 