The holidays are coming. This should be a joyful time with family and friends but for many members of our island family this season may be very hard.

Our island community has been wounded over and over again this year with suicides and untimely deaths.

For some of us it has been extremely personal. We have lost family members and dear friends.

For some of us, it has been more at a distance but still impacting us through our relationships with others.

We are a small community with strong bonds. We support each other in times of trouble. We help each other in times of need. We reach out in love to our island family.

It is in this spirit that a very special choral concert is being offered to our community on November 23rd, the Saturday before Thanksgiving, at the Presbyterian Church, at 7 p.m.

It is a concert about peace-peace with God, inner peace, and peace with our neighbors. It is a time when we can come together for healing of broken hearts.

It is a time when we can reach out in love to each other and raise each other up. The Presbyterian musical family has been joined by others in our community to offer this concert to you.

The concert is built around the beautiful prayer of St. Francis, “Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love.  Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy.

“Oh Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned. It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

Everyone is invited and it is free to all. We look forward to sharing this wonderful evening with you.

—Submitted by Laura Concord, choral director, Friday Harbor Presbyterian Church