Multifaith prayer vigil at Columbus Circle for Renee Nicole Good and thirty-nine others who have died in or fleeing ICE abuse in the past year. After some prayers (including one from the Episcopal Bishop of New York), Buddhist and Sikh chants and a mourner's Kaddish, each of the forty name was read, as the names and pictures of all were held aloft, with the person's age when known. When a soprano then sang "Ave Maria" I pictured those whose names we had heard sheltered and united beneath her cloak, as in that statue I so love in Vienna. The vigil ended with Good's widow's poignant tribute to the beloved whose murder she witnessed, a Hindu invocation of the rage at evil and cosmogonic love of dancing Mahakali, and a rendering of "Amazing Grace."
I sometimes think interfaith events dumb traditions down to an uninspiring lowest common denominator but these prayers didn't downplay the differences. Their fierce particularity heightened our shared grief at each of these senseless deaths, and our determination that hatred and cruelty shall not prevail.
