For hundreds of years, the skirl of the pipes have been used to call communities to action against a common foe and to summon the courage, to boost flagging morale when hope seemed lost. So effective were the pipes in uniting people that the English once prohibited them as “an instrument of war.”
Our nation is currently at war against an insidious, invisible enemy that has fundamentally changed our communities and our way of life. Our communities need to hear the defiant sound of the pipes to remind us that we will not surrender; we will beat this. We need “Ceol Mor,” “Big Music,” to encourage our first responders to continue the fight, to remind our government leaders that we as a community are here, and to let those who are mourning in isolation that they are not alone and their loved ones are not forgotten.
We are putting a call out for Pipers in the area to do the following: At 6:50 pm, we ask you to go outside and play “Amazing Grace” in tribute to those mourning in social isolation and to seek God’s grace for our communities in this time of need. We then ask you to play the “Minstral Boy” or a patriotic tune as a sign that this crisis will never get the better of us. The goal is that this should lead up to 7:00 pm, which has become a worldwide time for a public round of applause for healthcare workers and first responders.
At this time of crisis, let the sound of the pipes bring us together and encourage us to continue the fight than surrender to despair.