Calling all chorolocovores

Food shelves are having a tough go of it, at the moment. Demand is way up; locations are down. So, Minneapolitans, here's an opportunity for you to help.

InVocation, my choir, lives by Frederick Buechner's definition of vocation: where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet. We're spending the first two weekends of May concertizing to raise money for Second Harvest Heartland. It's a great investment; for every $1 we raise, Second Harvest can distribute $9 worth of food.

It's a good deal, and it's an important time to help food shelves. So come on out to one of our concerts; we're doing some terrific music:

• the world premiere of a new work entitled “Invocation,” written for us by Montana composer Thomas Keesecker, and based on a traditional Navajo prayer
  
  
• psalm settings by Bobby McFerrin and Carol Barnett
  
  
• a buoyant Hebrew peace prayer arranged by Alice Parker
  
  
• Christian music from Hugo Distler and Francis Poulenc (four of St. Francis’ prayers, set for men’s voices)
  
  
• settings of the poetry of Rumi and Rilke by local composer J. David Moore
  
  
• Gustav Holst’s Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda (Hindu prayers arranged for women’s voices) with harpist Tonya Anderson
  
  
• chants from the Brazilian rainforest, the Buddhist tradition, and a Japanese temple song

The program, "The Beauty We Love," is based on some of the writings of 13th-century Muslim mystic poet Rumi:

If you think that there’s an important difference
between a Muslim and a Jew
and a Christian and a Buddhist
and a Hindu and a Shamanist,
then you’re making a division
between your heart
— what you love with —
and your ability to act in the world.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

So, come on out to a concert if you can. Feed the hungry...and maybe get a little fed, yourself! Hope to see you there:

Saturday, May 2 @ 7 pm
St. Joseph’s Catholic Parish
13015 Rockford Rd
Plymouth
[ map ]

Sunday, May 3 @ 4 pm
Calvary Lutheran Church
3901 Chicago Avenue South
Minneapolis
[ map ]

Friday, May 8 @ 7:30 pm
Macalester Plymouth United Church
1658 Lincoln Ave
St. Paul
[ map ]

Saturday, May 9 @ 7 pm
Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church
12650 Johnny Cake Ridge Rd
Apple Valley

[ map ]