Perhaps it’s embarrassing of me to admit this here at one of the dedicated hubs of their overall fan base, but until I was a fellow faculty member two summers ago at the Glen West Workshop hosted by Image, I had never heard of Over the Rhine—the musical/marital duo of Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist.

For those of you who, like me, have been kept in the dark by evil cosmic forces, leave this website for theirs and start listening.

(Then return to this one and make a holiday donation in gratitude for the enlightenment!)

Okay, maybe the fault was all mine, seeing that my musical library tends to gather the dust of habitual listening. But now that Over the Rhine is on the shelf where they’ve long belonged, a good dusting has been had.

What is strange about the prominent place their music now holds there is that I met them in person before first hearing them live (or recorded) at the closing night concert they give yearly at the Glen.

Thus I’ve had the odd experience of being somewhat starstruck in a belated fashion, after the initial seeds of friendship were planted at the nighttime faculty gatherings under a starry New Mexico sky.

I still remember meeting Linford that first summer, for how delighted he was to realize that my wife and I were staying in the apartment with various sets of children’s shoes outside the door. We had brought our three little kids along, including our newborn, and were quite self-conscious about the racket that sometimes erupted from our apartment and ours only.

I made a mild apology to that effect when introducing myself to Linford, but the collection of small shoes outside our door had truly made the bigger impression. Only when I began to acquaint myself with his lyrics did I see why this was inevitably so.

For if I had to characterize the music of Over the Rhine with two words rather than the standard one-word paeans we resort to as armchair critics—Awesome! Amazing! Dope!—it might be these: relentless tenderness.

In a fitting fashion for this Advent season, those two words became flesh at a recent show they gave in New York City as part of their annual holiday tour.

Having seen Over the Rhine live only in the intimate setting of the Glen, where a good portion of their audience consists of friends, students, and acquaintances, it was a telling sight to join a crowd at a Greenwich Village venue packed wall to wall with fans.

And having spent much of my initial immersion in their music with the most recent album, The Long Surrender, their relentless tenderness was all the more in evidence as I heard the songs from their two Christmas albums, Snow Angels and The Darkest Night of the Year.

Song by song it fell like “First Snowfall,” pun intended, on an asphalt soul that felt woefully unprepared for the coming of Christmas.

Three songs in, though, with the nearly angelic melody of “White Horse,” I had the most amazing sensation that found articulation and synchronicity in the Advent reading from Isaiah the very next morning at church:

“A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’”

Here’s how Over the Rhine imagine traveling it in “White Horse”:

Bring me a white horse for Christmas
We’ll ride him through the snow
All the way to Bethlehem
Two thousand years ago

I wanna speak with the angel
Who said do not be afraid
I wanna kneel where the oxen knelt
Where the little child was laid

Hush now, baby
One day you’re gonna ride
Hush now, baby
Your white horse through the sky

If a highway could take shape in my soul at that moment it was thanks to the reminder that songs like “We’re Gonna Pull Through” provide.

We’ve been reckless, we’ve been good
Doing most of things we should
But the picture is much bigger than we knew
And we’re gonna pull through, we’re gonna pull through

That said, my Advent hasn’t been as mindful or heartful as I’d hoped it would be. I’ve been working around the clock, short on sleep and long on angst about what I deem unaccomplished at the end of yet another year.

I’m a victim, no doubt, of the self-inflicted “Incurable Whirling Disease,” as Linford terms it in his poem, “Exit,” currently featured as poem of the week on the Over the Rhine site.

If anything, “Mesus” has been the reason for the season this time around—and not the first time.

Clearly, to quote my favorite track on The Long Surrender, “Only God Can Save Us Now.”

When my time has come and it may be comin’ soon
Don’t mind me if you come to find me howlin’ at the moon
I’ll need a busy apron and a half-sedated crowd
Only God can save us now