Melbourne was dry, dusty and muggy, heading in direction of 32 levels. Trams rumbled down Collins Avenue, clanging their bells as pedestrians strode briskly throughout their lunch break, speaking to colleagues. As they hurried alongside, their conversations halted; they nudged one another and smiled, heads turning to see by the imposing entrance of a metropolis constructing.
Constructed greater than 100 years in the past because the banking chamber for the then affluent Industrial Financial institution of Australia, 333 Collins Avenue has a hovering Italian baroque dome, inlaid marble floorings, gilt-detailed columns and arches, however that’s not what was slowing down the pedestrian site visitors outdoors.
Christmas decorations adorn the doorway to 333 Collins Avenue.Credit score: Jessica Shapiro
Beneath the ceiling decorations that blazed like suns was a formidable Christmas tree, embellished with garlands of what seemed like crimson flowers, gold and crimson baubles and twinkling golden lights. The shimmering Christmas tree was not, nonetheless, the rationale why metropolis staff turned to stare as they handed the constructing.
Music was floating out into the road. Harmonising voices have been raised in music. They belonged to a faculty choir, singing well-loved Christmas hymns in regards to the start of Christ, they usually drew me contained in the constructing as irresistibly as if somebody had known as my title.
In a metropolis of busy, scurrying staff preoccupied with the deadlines that have to be met earlier than the Christmas break, right here was a pocket of magnificence, like a waterfall stumbled upon by probability on a sizzling ramble by the bush. The hymns – resembling As soon as in Royal David’s Metropolis and O Holy Evening – swept across the lobby, spinning pictures of one thing treasured that’s typically misplaced within the pragmatic calls for of the working day.
The phrases of O Holy Evening, sung in thunderous, electrifying harmonies – “Fall in your knees! O hear the angel voices! O night time divine, O night time when Christ was born …” – resounded like a command or a rebuke, sending chills down my backbone.
The hovering Italian baroque dome inside 333 Collins Avenue.Credit score: Erin Jonasson
The phrases have been truthful; we’d fall on our knees, speechless, within the face of the fact of the extraordinary nature of God, each the creator of life and but seemingly incongruously private in His gentleness in direction of, and love of, the person. The hymns resurrected one other actuality, characterised by a simplicity and charm.
They took the breath away and crammed the eyes with trembling tears that would not be shed, not there, within the bustling enterprise coronary heart of Melbourne. As a substitute, I studied the shiny, patterned ground of that enchanting previous constructing, mesmerised by the echo of one thing everlasting that had discovered a voice and rung out throughout town.