Surviving the Metaverse

My childhood religious education was, you might say, haphazard. I met many of the most famous Bible verses for the first time not in church, or through a family member, but in Handel’s Messiah, which I listened to so many times as a youth that I memorized much of the libretto. But somewhat like the many people who think they hear Jimi Hendrix singing “Excuse me while I kiss this guy” (as opposed to “the sky”), I didn’t get all the words right. I didn’t hear Handel’s setting of ­Isaiah 40:1–5 as declaring: “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, And all flesh shall see it together; For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” Instead, I thought the choir was singing: “And all flesh shall cease together.”