More than 700 sisters gather Aug. 9 for the first full day of the 2017 annual assembly of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, held Aug. 8-11 in Orlando, Florida. (GSR photo / Soli Salgado)
Switching between podium and piano, keynote speaker Christopher Pramuk played slave spirituals and U2 hits for the 786 sisters attending the annual assembly of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, held Aug. 8-11 in Orlando, Florida.
He struck a chord metaphorically, too: Pramuk, a theologian from Xavier University in Cincinnati, tied together the concepts of music, grief and refuge in his lecture, "Will the Circle Be Unbroken? Leaning Into the Mystery of Resurrection Faith."
Rather than equating refuge to escape, Pramuk defined it in this case as "where we go to find our center," he said Aug. 9.
Pramuk's refuge is music. As an 8-year-old, he discovered it "seemed to take my breath away and give it back in the same stroke."