Sacred streets

My dad got me an mp3 player for my birthday, and after a few initial troubles, I've been enjoying it very much.

I listen to quite a lot of Renaissance choral music - Palestrina, Victoria, Tallis et al. - which means it's all settings of sacred words, Glorias and Credos and the like. Because such music was intended to be heard in churches, physical 'sacred spaces', I often feel like I'm in an 'auditory sacred space' when I'm listening to it.

But the weird experience that I've been having is that this technology allows me to take this music out into the world, into the streets of London, into a context for which it was never intended.

Where I'm expecting the fragrance of incence and candles - I get car fumes and cigarette smoke.

Where I'm expecting the order and beauty, altar, candles, icons - I get a jumble of advertising, shoes, streets, food, faces, window displays, gadgets, buses, posters, rubbish.

Where I'm expecting to 'pass the peace' with the people around me - I'm in their way and have to elbow my way through the crowd.

But then I heard: "descendit de coelis...et homo factus est" - He descended from heaven...and was made human - and I realised that this was what the words meant - he descended from heaven and lived in amongst all this - he walked down the street on a Monday afternoon and experienced car fumes and advertising and crowds. I wonder if in some ways the streets of London are actually a better context for these words and this music than a church?