Advent Fish

Since Advent will be here soon…

When the folk music era began to give way to rock ‘n roll around 1970, The Chad Mitchell Trio, one of the most successful groups of the 1960s, disbanded. By that time, John Denver had replaced Chad, who had gone onto a solo career, and John went onto a remarkable solo career of his own. Mike Kobluk, the bass, became an arts administrator. Joe Frazier, the baritone, went to Yale Divinity School and became an Episcopal priest.

Even if you were once a famous singer [and are becoming one again, since the Trio reunites once in a while for special events], in Advent, Joe must do what every preacher must do—explain the Incarnation, Emmanuel, “God with us.”

Being a famous singer doesn’t help. Having an aquarium does.

For the kids’ time in worship, Father Frazier shows the children an aquarium.

“If you wanted to really be able to talk to the fish in there,” he says, “what would you do?”

The kids try a lot of things—speaking gobbledygook, hoping it might turn out to be fish language, or tapping on the glass in what they hope is a fish form of Morse code.

“I never help them; they always figure it out for themselves,” Joe says. “Sooner or later, one of them brightens up and says, ‘You’d become a fish,’ and they all say, ‘Sure, you’d become one of them.”