Many voices — one prayer

People of a score of faiths joined together to sing for peace Sunday at the Tabernacle on Temple Square during a diverse interfaith service in which Cambodian dancers shared the stage with American Indian drummers.

Organizers estimate nearly 4,000 filled the Tabernacle for the second annual Interfaith Musical Tribute to the Human Spirit, believed to be the most musically and spiritually diverse event ever hosted by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Music was interspersed with prayer and song, beginning with lone flutist Nino Reyos, a Ute/Pueblo, entering the rear of the Tabernacle in traditional dress, walking slowly up the center aisle playing a traditional melody on his wooden flute.

Ute Elder Quentin Kolb thanked the creator "for the time you take to listen, for your blessings and for your creation . . . We are bound together just as surely as the matter of Einstein's energy. We can act in your name, celebrate your victories and are bound in your work."

The Eagle Eye Drum Group formed a circle on the rostrum just below the choir seats, chanting its "Honor Song" to the rising and falling beat of drums that reverberated throughout the Tabernacle.

The Orchestra at Temple Square performed a number by Beethoven, then cleared the stage after Arati Sinha offered a Hindu prayer asking that "our leaders in whom we have trusted (may) realize that war . . . leaves behind no winners, only victims."

St. Paul's Episcopal Choir and the Utah Valley Mass Choir filled the choir seats below the organ-pipe backdrop, dressed in traditional choir robes and offering up widely varying versions of musical worship — the former in reverenced a capella and the latter in Pentecostal praising, complete with a recorded band for back-up.

Cantor Laurence Loeb of Congregation Kol Ami vocalized a Jewish prayer of Psalms 116, followed by a group of Hispanic Catholic guitarists, whose Spanish renditions included "My Mother of Guadalupe."

Nahzaneen Aghdassi offered a unity prayer, saying her family came from a nation where members of her Baha'i faith "were persecuted or even put to death. . . . Here in Salt Lake City, friends of all faiths love and respect me for who I am.

"It is my hope and my dream that some day all nations will cherish religious diversity as we do here today."

Christian Science spokeswoman Sabrina Stillwell echoed Aghdassi's sentiments, saying, "love is the only power. Let it touch and transform each one of us in deep and meaningful ways" so that "faults and stereotypes (won't) separate us. Let us see each other as we really are."