"This will be our response to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before." ~ Leonard Bernstein
September 11, 2001 was a day indelibly inscribed in our minds... changing the world as we knew it and shaping our thoughts, our actions, and our culture.
Like most people, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing. I was with my mother in Indiana when the nightmare started unfolding, getting ready to head to the airport and back home after a week visting my mother's sister and twin brother. We had a rental car, so ended up driving back to Minnesota and North Dakota, figuring it could take days before we could travel by air. It was a journey of shock and mourning... and now it is already 10 years later.
Music and the arts have a unique way of uniting peoples and cultures and we have both in abundance in the Twin Cities. Last night the Minneapolis Downtown Interfaith Community drew together to perform Songs of Hope in a concert service of remembrance and hope. Hope for peace. Hope for the future.
The beautiful Basilica of St. Mary, the first basilica in the United States, was a fitting setting for this moving service that included Leonard Bernstein's stunning Chichester Psalms, as well as readings and prayers from the Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Universalist traditions.
At the end of the moving concert everyone's candles were lit as the youth choir sang "Every face is in you..." Then we all left the cathedral carrying our lighted candles, carrying the light "out into a world that has been shrouded in the darkness of fear, ignorance and intolerance."
Today every corner of state will stop to remember, including a gathering on the Capitol grounds from 2 to 4 and a Civic Commemoration and Memorial Mass at the Cathedral of St. Paul at 4:30 and 5:00.
Sharlene Hensrud, RE/MAX Results - Email - HomesMSP.com
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