I posted this last year, and it still echoes my thoughts and feelings about this day. May small points of light continue to shine on the path as we reflect and remember.
Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so
move every human heart, and especially the hearts of the
people of this land, that barriers which divide us may
crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that our
divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer)
When I lived in St. Louis, I became a fan of the outdoor musical theatre company called the MUNY, which generally performed 8 shows each summer at one week duration each. The MUNY experience involved 10,000 people sitting shoulder to shoulder in the heat of a Midwest summer night, no air conditioning, giant overhead fans on tall poles that only turned on before the performance, at intermission, and when the curtain calls ended.
The summer of 2002 at the MUNY opened with a play rarely performed in a setting of this nature: The Fantasticks. The Director at the time, Paul Blake, had specifically chosen that musical for that particular year, when the country was still reeling in the aftermath of the terrorists attacks on September 11, 2001. In his opening talk, he reflected that to him, the musical…and one song in particular…captured a spirit of shattered innocence mixed with…
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small points of light 