A special musical presentation in our sanctuary. Offered in partnership with the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Sedona. Sedona premiere of songs and storytelling inspired by 11 extraordinary women. Music by Mary Lou Prince. Words by Patty Christiena Willis. Performed by the Quad City Interfaith Choir, singers from faith traditions including Unitarian Universalist, Latter Day Saints, Jewish, Presbyterian and Congregational Church. The event is free of charge but a Love Offering will be taken to support both Hope House.
Women of Courage:
The Unveiling of a Monument of Words and Song
A friend has dedicated a wall of her living room to her heroes. Each time she walks by, she feels infused by their courage. Wanting to honor and remember the courage of their own heroes, composer Mary Lou Prince and lyricist Patty Willis have created a monument of words and song. These songs honor women, known and unknown, who have changed the world through their courageous lives.
Each woman encountered seemingly insurmountable difficulties, and each used her unique talents to transform the world into which she was born. Some of our women of courage are well known. At 74 years of age, Eleanor Roosevelt is traveling through the Tennessee countryside, a $25,000 bounty on her head by the KKK, a loaded gun between her and the 71-year-old woman driving the car through the backwoods to the Highlander School to teach a workshop on civil disobedience. The FBI will not protect her. She has a commitment to keep.
Etty Hillesum, a Jew, and brilliant Russian scholar living in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam is the beating heart of the barracks of Westerbork where Jews await transport to Auschwitz. She accompanies a reality she cannot change and dares to feel joy at lupines blooming in a muddy field.
Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farmworkers and mother of eleven children, inspired people to believe in themselves. We can speak truth to power. We can make a difference. “Si, se puede.” “Yes, we can.”
Viola Jimulla, at the death of her husband in 1940, became the chieftess of the Yavapai people. She said, “I had to help my people in whatever they needed. Her firm but benevolent rule brought new industry and dignity to her tribe.
Recy Taylor, a young married black woman, gang raped as she returns home from a church service one evening in rural Alabama, will not keep the silence demanded by her violators. She continued to demand justice. Her courage inspired her advocate, Rosa Parks, and Recy’s story was on her mind when she would not move to the back of the bus. In 2012, she finally received an apology from the state of Alabama and her town Abbeville.
Mine Okubo, a gifted painter interned at Topaz in central Utah when American citizens of Japanese ancestry were rounded up during World War II, uses her gifts to express the loss and daily cruelty of a dark time of our American past. She bids us not forget and not repeat.
The authors hope that these songs will inspire listeners to courageous acts that are waiting to be born.
Performances of work by Patty Willis and Mary Lou Prince have been featured at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, International Theater Festivals in Kanazawa, Kyoto and Tokyo Japan and New York City, The Parliament of World Religions, Women by Music Festival at Mississippi University for Women, Nadia Boulan9er and her Students Festival at the University of Arizona, BBC Radio Scotland and NHK Television Japan. For more information, please contact Mary Lou Prince at musicdirectorgranitepeakuu@gmail.com.
