Everything about the event was magnificent--the cathedral setting itself, the gathering in and filling of that setting by Protestant Christians, the disciplined merging of musical technique with an amazing range of offerings in several languages, and at the heart of it all the obvious devotion of the singers and instrumentalists themselves.
The concert both addressed our human condition and offered hope. It drew together strands that tend too much these days to be separated and fragmented. Quiet tender harmonies and loud burts of song were continually multiplied by their echoes in the cathedral nave and dome.
Thank God for musicians--composers, conductors, and performers alike--who bridge in faith the gaps within and between us that only divide. Florence Johnson's poem quoted above carries within it a sacred reminder for Christians everywhere in this world to embody the legacy we have been given within the church of Christ and spread its glory throughout the world.
Out of the scars of wretchedness languid boughs turn again upward. / Tracing the careful intention of a beauty emended by love / A life meant to reach heavenward, a monument of creation / Rising o'er earth's constriction to freedom and splendor above.
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