New Concord is NOW!

Only moments after I arrived in Concord, Massachusetts on Good Friday afternoon, I confessed to my host that I was anxious about what to expect at the town’s 250th anniversary celebration of the “Shot Heard Round the World.” Would the military reenactors rule the patriotic roost from Battle Road to Bush (Emerson’s home), Hawthorne’s Old Manse, and Thoreau Farm; or would skirmishes break out all over town, between red–capped MAGA maniacs and their fearsome “Massachusetts Liberal” neighbors? Either way, the prospect that I would spend this Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday among citizens preoccupied with a much more secular festival of commemoration than the Mystery of Golgotha unnerved me a bit.

Though Minutemen and British Regulars mucked about with muskets on both banks of the Concord River, and their booming cannons occasionally stopped one’s heart, the truly eternal elements of the scene at the Dawn Salute on Buttrick Hillside were the “Poor Sam Peabody” calls of white–throated sparrows in the flanking swamps, a kingfisher cackling as he swooped under the North Bridge, and the honking of geese overhead. Even the irksome drone of a pair of hovering National Guard helicopters could not destroy the poignancy of a bugler’s sounding of taps in memory of the local men who – 250 years ago to the day – kissed wife and children goodbye at breakfast, and came home the same day in a rude pine box.

Not George III, but another tyrant was on most citizens’ minds along the 4–mile–long parade route. Though the revolutionary spirit was definitely afoot in Concord, it was trumped by the amiable atmosphere of hospitality.

At the invitation of retired superteacher Rob Morrison, I joined Rob’s band of 18 “Concord Cousins” (from 11 – out of 97! – other American Concords). Positioned between a fine fife & drum corps and the rocking band and cheerleaders of Concord–Carlisle High School, we were graciously enveloped in sound.

Representing Chatham, NY’s historic hamlet of New Concord, I was gun–shy about the silken place name sash; having turned it into a headband, I promptly lost it as I hustled to join the Cousins for the muster at Emerson Field. A makeshift replacement safety–pinned into place across my happy heart, I took up my position at the rear of our contingent.

At one point, as the procession spilled down the gentle hillside above the North Bridge on the gravel Groton Road, a man on the parade path pointed at my sash, asking, “Where’s New Concord?”

Placing my right hand over my heart, I could only reply: “Right here, my brother.” He nodded a knowing affirmation.

I had already been thinking that my Holy Saturday wish was for every single person in America to march in a true Parade of Concord, so that they might experience the outpouring of love and joy that we Concord Cousins received on that parade route. Suddenly “New Concord” rang for all of us with the same promise of brother–and–sisterhood amity that inspired this uniquely blessèd town’s – and every other American “Concord’s” – faith–full founders.

Later in the day, when I told a new Concord friend about this moment out on the grassy meadow across the North Bridge, she declared that “New Concord is now!”

Her prophetic utterance was still ringing in my ears on Easter Sunday, when, back home in Columbia County again, I joined a small circle of friends for a threefold celebration – of the Mass of the Lamb and His Bride; the Grail Knight’s Initiation; and the Fish Communion. These three sacramental rites inspired by the advent of the Etheric Christ are profound invitations to wed our thinking, feeling, and willing in true Con–cord with the Logos. The New Concord is indeed now; let us make it so