​​​Walking in the Air:
An Advent Music Meditation

Patricia Adams Farmer

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​We're walking in the air
We're floating in the moonlit sky
The people far below
Are sleeping as we fly I'm holding very tight
I'm riding in the midnight blue
I'm finding I can fly
​So high above with you

-- from “Walking in the Air” by Howard Blake
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As many of us light the “love” candle this Sunday -- the fourth Sunday of Advent -- perhaps we will remember the little boy and his snowman in Raymond Brigg’s 1978 children’s book, The Snowman. It is a story in pictures of love and loss and magical beauty.

In 1982, a British animated adaptation of the book features the hauntingly beautiful song, “Walking in the Air,” composed by Howard Blake. In this music/flying sequence, we are swept up in the magical travels across the sky of the boy and his snowman. The soul-stirring beauty of this song (sung by St. Paul’s Cathedral choir boy, Peter Auty) matched with the tender, pencil-sketched animation lifts us out of our despair for this world, and into a deeper connection with it.

“Walking in the Air” stirs the soul and expands our hearts to the size of the earth itself. Love, indeed! Perhaps such music can save us from the narrow, separate cubicles we tend to inhabit below, and the sense of loneliness and estrangement that rears its head for many during the holidays.

In this song, we are invited to rise above the separate parts, the entrenched views, the narrow focus, and fly into the wideness -- the breadth and depth and wholeness of love. The transcendent sky gifts us with a breathtaking vision: a bird’s-eye-view to explore our connections with people and snowmen and whales and icebergs. High up in the moonlit sky, we are lured by divine imagination into a wider sense of belonging, one that sustains us even in loss.

The image of the little boy and his snowman gliding through the midnight air with hands held tightly reminds me of the tiny baby in the manger and the view that God “dwells in the tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operate by love” (Whitehead). Yes, this is love, the deep and wide heart of Christmas. We need it now more the ever.
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So, let’s go walking in the air!  A few moments up in the sky can change everything.

​Lyrics:

We're walking in the air
We're floating in the moonlit sky
The people far below
​Are sleeping as we fly
I'm holding very tight
​I'm riding in the midnight blue
I'm finding I can fly
So high above with you
Far across the world
The villages go by like dreams
The rivers and the hills
The forests and the streams
Children gaze open-mouthed
Taken by surprise
Nobody down below
Believes their eyes
We're surfing in the air
We're swimming in the frozen sky
We're drifting over icy
Mountains floating by
Suddenly swooping low
On an ocean deep
Rousing up a mighty monster From his sleep
We're walking in the air
We're dancing in the midnight sky
And everyone who sees us
​Greets us as we fly

Walking Softly on Earth
​
after dancing in the midnight sky

To some, it can seem escapist or overly idealistic to spend a few moments in the moonlit sky, walking in the air, and taking a bird's-eye view of the world. "We must keep our feet on the ground," some might say, "where the suffering is." 

But the ground is also the place where people are torn by competing points of view and allegiances, where greed begets greed, and hatred begets hatred. Indeed, our own greeds and hatreds may be among them, regardless of which side of the political, economic, and religious spectrum we may be on. If we stare at the others, whoever they are, eyeball to eyeball, our greeds and hatreds fester.

The need is to take a moment in the clouds, to rise and float above it all, recognizing the fragility, partiality, and connectedness of all life. This rising is not escaping; it is gaining perspective. And perhaps Christmas, for Christians, is an invitation to gain just this perspective, to see how things look and feel from the vantage point of the Holy, and to return to Earth with tenderness, humility, and love.

In this spirit, Patricia Adams Farmers invites us to walk in the air, to let go, to embrace the world with a soft touch, as soft as a baby in a manger. Yes, let's take a walk in the midnight sky. And let's return with hearts softened by a sense that, after all, the only real hope is not might against might, but rather a certain and hopeful kind of walking on earth: a way that "dwells in the tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operate by love."

Is this way of walking overly romantic? Overly sentimental? Not, she says, for those who find God in a holy infant, so tender and mild, sleeping in heavenly peace. The very innocence of this child, transcending the greed and hatred that wracks the world, and the pain, reveals the best hope for the world today and a beautiful one at that.

Sometimes the best way to walk softly on Earth is to take a moment, or many moments, at least once or twice a day, to dance in the sky.

- Jay McDaniel