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'Moving, mesmerising, magnificent!' Andrea Bocelli leaves viewers in tears as 3.4 million watch his Music For Hope concert live from the deserted Duomo di Milano on Easter Sunday
Photo: youTube
‘Opera star Andrea Bocelli has held an Easter concert in Milan, singing in the city's famous cathedral - accompanied only by the organ.
Called Music for Hope, the concert was live-streamed on YouTube and prompted an outpouring of applause on social media as millions of people around the world celebrated Easter under lockdown.
"Thanks to music, streamed live, bringing together millions of clasped hands everywhere in the world, we will hug this wounded Earth's pulsing heart," Bocelli said at the beginning of his performance.
For the finale, he sang Amazing Grace outside the cathedral, facing the empty streets of Milan’-The BBC
Read and see more on the healing power of music
Photo:bing.com
Playing for Change: How music can change the world!
Interfaith Spiritual Music to Heal the World, GCGI 1st Conference, Oxford 2002
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Birds, buds, blossoms, and brighter days heralding the hope of Easter
Photo:Jacky Parker Photography/Getty Images, via The Guardian
This year Easter matters more than ever in the age of the coronavirus
Hope is the Message of Easter and the Resurrection of Spring
Despite – or perhaps because of – my Persian upbringing, nonetheless, since marrying my English wife in 1974, I have always been a sucker for the Easter story, offering a message of hope – that even after the greatest pain, there is renewal.
The message of Easter, and the signal sent by the arrival of spring, is that life will return, one way or another. At times of crises, this story is timeless and priceless, let’s cling to it.
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Easter is HOPE: As far back as the 6th century BC, the Greek poet Theognis of Megara said: “Hope is the one good god remaining.”
As the poet Theo Dorgan reminds us, hope is a profound act of imagination, the most important and the most neglected of the civic virtues. In the face of the present coronavirus pandemic and other societal and global crises we can lie down in despair, or we can choose hope — which means placing all our faith in each other and in the boundless capacity of the imagination to reinvent circumstance, to establish new truths.
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Out of the coronavirus crisis, a new kinder and better world must be born
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Covid-19 has come to tell us that we are not the kings of the world: It has exposed the great weakness within the human triumph
Our Planet Matters:Our Lives Matters
Photo: TFF The Transnational:
Dear All,
As I began to formulate this email to you earlier this morning , I started to feel more anxious than usual. Fear and doubt began to take over me.
With our prime minister, alongside many many thousands of others in hospitals and ICU departments, it is now becoming so real what is happening all over the world.
Today also our daughter-in-law who is a senior nurse at our Coventry hospital started her new 12-hour shift in the critical care ward. Up to yesterday she was in the blood transfusion department.
Although we are proud of her and other NHS heroes, I will be economical with the truth if I tell you, we are not worried and concerned.
Thus, I was in two minds if I should send you my letter which I had written a while back to honour and celebrate this day: the 250th Birthday of the Poet of Nature, The First Eco-Warrior.
I decided to err on the side of Hope, Love, Beauty and Friendship and do send the letter after all. We must not despair, we must walk on. We must remain resilient and positive.
As fear spreads, systems falter and uncertainty takes up residence in our daily lives, hearts and minds, we must try and be inspired by something much bigger than our usual selves.
Let us choose Love, let us choose life, let us choose kindness, let us choose gratitude, let us choose resting deep into the sacred earth and mother nature for strength, wisdom and resilience, let us use the tools that we have been given and let us breathe softly and listen. This may well be the moment our soul has been waiting for.
Please give me your kindness and read my letter. (See the link below).
Along with you, I’ve been feeling deeply into this moment and feel we stand at the threshold of profound global transformation. The better world is just round the corner. Our role in this transformation is unique and irreplaceable. Attend your imagination, your dreams and hopes. Receive wisdom and insight from this new perspective that will help you find hope in the face of the unknown, and ‘Let nature be your teacher.
This Is My Letter to You: The Sweetness of Being Human: ‘We have all of us one human heart.’
- World in Chaos and Despair: Let Wordsworth be Your Teacher
- An open letter to all my fellow academic colleagues: Make Education ‘A Thing of Beauty’
- The Sweetness of Being Human: ‘We have all of us one human heart.’
- Lessons from an old-time social distancer for novices like us
- Coronavirus Crisis and Mounting Debt: Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors