The World House Choir wants to share the news — through our singing — that all of us who gather for our upcoming concert, Come Sit at the Welcome Table, have a role to play in creating a better, more welcoming landscape of love for New Americans and for each other.
Earlier this year as we planned these concerts, we thought about immigrants, new Americans, men and women who have come to our shores to improve their lives as many of our ancestors did. The disparaging language used to describe these new community members disturbed us. We wanted to sing them in rather than cast them out.
We were also thinking of the plight of refugees worldwide, fleeing war and environmental degradation. But today we are compelled to include refugees in our own country, our Michigan neighbors in Flint, living as refugees in their own town, many still without drinkable water. We think of the First Nation’s people who have gathered in North Dakota to protect their sacred right to water. They too feel like refugees as they are called to protect their ancestral lands ravaged by greedy pipe dreams of oil.
We will sing poetry to uplift and engage one another, weaving simple yet lofty [choral] ideals with concepts like common good, collaboration, compassion, consensus, community, caring, and interconnection.
The placement and juxtaposition of these choral works weaves a story about our collective lives because when we become extremists for love and justice we will, in the lyrics of Carrie Newcomer’s compelling song, “Room at the Table”
……sing the new world in
this is how it all begins,
there is room at the table for everyone.
There’s enough if we share, come on, pull up a chair,
there is room at the table for everyone.
Please join us for one of these performances.
- Wednesday, September 7 at 7:00pm First Presbyterian Church, Yellow Springs
- Friday, September 9 at 7:00pm First Presbyterian Church, Yellow Springs
- Saturday, September 10 at 7:00 Grace United Methodist Church, Dayton, Ohio
- Sunday, September 11 at 3:00, Urbana University for the Community Day of Remembrance
Admission is free and childcare is provided.
by
Catherine Roma