In frightening times, it makes a huge difference not to feel alone.

Creating art with others in community enhances agency and strengthens self.

Creativity requires an open heart; love enhances hope and diminishes fear.

Pulling my red jacket close against the chill of an early March day, I grabbed my music bag from the car and made my way across the street toward the Mount Holyoke College Abbey.

Once inside, I found myself looking for space among dozens of singers filling the Abbey’s interfaith sanctuary. Adults of all ages dressed in concert black—college students and professors, grandparents and great grandparents and all in-between— were spread across the packed room, taking up every chair, overflowing onto steps. Gathered in circles, many students sat on the floor, eyes on their cellphones.

This concert brought together three longstanding choruses in our valley. Together we would sing Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem after the intermission.

First notes of a violin sounded through the half-opened pink and blue stained-glass windows connecting the sanctuary and the Abbey Chapel/Concert Hall. The orchestra’s tuning had begun; the room fell silent.

The initial piece on the program was Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copeland. Leaning against the wall beside one of the windows, I listened to the gentle opening of Copeland’s music as it came alive. Oboes and flutes conjured up birds’ early songs; a few violins brought dawn’s gentle light. I could see pale shoots promising more life to come. Both music and images became stunningly beautiful.

While a chilly fog shrouded the world outdoors, in this sacred space, oboes, flutes, and violins brought us to an earth waking after a long winter. Hope! I saw birds! Flowers! An apple tree under a vast blue sky. A robin with straw in her beak building a nest in the tree.

I thought of the handmade card I’d received in the mail a month earlier, in the midst of a sub-zero cold spell. “Spring is Coming!” it read. Printed in pink ink in a child’s hand, the words were framed by a border with a flower in each corner. I recognized Northampton Neighbors on the envelope’s return address. The card still stands on the kitchen table offering encouragement at the end of a dark, bitterly cold, and snowy winter. When my spirits start to lag, the card and the nurturing community behind it cheer my heart. It warms me to feel included.

Dona Nobis Pacem is a powerful cantata. Ralph Vaughan Williams, who had been deeply affected by his experience in WWI years earlier, composed it in 1936 as WWII loomed ahead. Reflecting poems written by Walt Whitman in response to the Civil War, and including quotations from the Bible and the Latin Mass, it appeared particularly well suited for the day of this concert. Its forceful timpani, poignant melodies, and moving solos for baritone and soprano spoke to the destruction of war and the longing for peace.

In frightening times, it makes a huge difference not to feel alone. Music reaches out to cheer hearts and bring us together. “Spring is Coming!" Music also embodies community—we were three different choruses, all of us singers, needing to sing. Emotionally, the timeliness of the piece offered a way to do something rather than feel powerless. We could add present beauty to this sad world:

That the hands of the sisters, Death and Night, incessantly, softly, wash again and ever again this soiled world.

Yes, there are terrible wrongs, but the cycle of life—the seasons, death and birth, despair and healing—will continue.

Whitman and Vaughan Williams note the humanity of every one of us:

For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead.

I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin—I draw near,

Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

Our plea: Dona Nobis Pacem, Grant Us Peace.

The concert ended with a standing ovation.

After threading our way through the sold-out crowd, we emerged into late afternoon. Pale sunlight had replaced dank fog. Strangers nodded as we passed, still enveloped by the music, all of us wrapped in a cloud of feeling beyond words.

I often struggle with myself. I want to take action to address these troubled times, yet I'm unsure of what I have to offer. Now, having experienced a profound message enunciated by a full orchestra, brilliant soloists and a vast chorus, I’m infused with music’s healing power. Like the young person who created my cheerful card, I’m one in a community of many, creating light that counters the darkness.

The moon gives you light,

And the bugles and the drums give you music,

My heart gives you love.

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