<aside> <img src="/icons/hand_gray.svg" alt="/icons/hand_gray.svg" width="40px" /> WELCOME and thank you for attending tonight’s performance from Westmoreland Festival Chorus. Use this page to follow along with the program, learn more about our work, and that of our cosponsor St. Thomas’ Parish, and beneficiary, MedGlobal.
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<aside> <img src="/icons/currency_gray.svg" alt="/icons/currency_gray.svg" width="40px" /> MedGlobal works to improve local health systems, support vulnerable communities, and respond to humanitarian crises. In particular, they are working in Gaza to keep hospitals operational, to ensure healthcare workers have meals, and to distribute hygiene kits to displaced families. Please give generously, as you are able, to support this important work. All donations are tax deductible.
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https://bit.ly/WFC-even-in-silence
<aside> <img src="/icons/profile_gray.svg" alt="/icons/profile_gray.svg" width="40px" /> Tonight’s program has a gravitational pull to the idea of refuge - not simply safety or shelter, but existential refuge; spiritual refuge. How does this need manifest in your life? Where do you find it? How do you offer it? Of course, we’re not attempting to satisfy these monumental questions, per se, just to give you, and us, a space to explore them together as common members of a community.
Many of these texts have religious sources - scriptural, liturgical, or personal - but by no means is this exploration limited to those of faith. The need for refuge is universal, and perhaps more than anything else, that is what this program asks us to contemplate; from the moment we are born we are in need, and even at our most independent, we should not forget that we stand on many many shoulders.
How does the need for refuge manifest in your life? The scope is wide: feeling alone, feeling hurt, not knowing what to do, facing difficulty, and ultimately our most terrible commonality, facing death. When we have the strength, we turn our gaze out into the world and see great pain. Injustice; political turmoil, war and destruction; No one of us can hold it all.
So where do you find refuge, then? What do you turn to when we face that we must continue, that we need comfort or strength? Your loved ones, perhaps, your family, partner, or community; your knowledge that there are people who are doing real good in the world; perhaps God or divine purpose; perhaps quantum mechanics or the conviction that things cannot happen in any other way than they do. When you find it, then you know even difficult times you can return to it. When the plane feels like it’s failing, you’ll have an oxygen mask to put on.
And that is perhaps necessary before we can most effectively ask **how do I offer refuge to others? “**I give to charity”; “I make sandwiches for the hungry”; “I advocate for Justice”; “I mentor youth”; “I accompany the lonely”; Sure. But also “I am present for my children”; “I create beauty in the world through music”; “I bear my own burdens”; “I practice kindness”; “I forgive myself for my shortcomings”.
And so tonight let us take a peek together. Part way through we will hear from MedGlobal about their work around the world offering refuge to vulnerable communities; and while I hope that you are able to give generously to support this work, the greatest gift you can give tonight is your full attention. We will give you ours in return, and together we can be nurtured for the journey.
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FIRST HALF: SMALL ENSEMBLE / SOLOISTS
Lauren Geist, soprano Laura Choi Stuart, soprano Maria Khoobyar, soprano Barbara Bulger Verdile, soprano
Mikayla Mindiola, mezzo-soprano Alyssa Stanton, mezzo-soprano Patricia Portillo, mezzo-sorano
Doug Gaddis, tenor John Becker, tenor Kyle Burke, tenor
Stanley Livengood, bass Collin Power, bass Alec Davis, bass
[Lamentations of Jeremiah - Book 3 - Good Friday, 2nd lesson]
<aside> <img src="/icons/music_gray.svg" alt="/icons/music_gray.svg" width="40px" /> “The Lamentations of Jeremiah consists of five poems (chapters) in the form of laments for Judah and Jerusalem when they were invaded and devastated by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, for the sufferings of the population, and for the poet himself during and after the catastrophe. These grief-stricken laments are intermingled with abject confessions of sin and prayers for divine compassion.” [more].
Solo Quartet: Alyssa Stanton, John Becker, Alec Davis, Collin Power
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