I just had as close to a religious experience as I think I've ever had at a rock concert.
█████ and I went to see U2 tonight at Madison Square Garden (with Garbage as openers). Security at the Garden is, of course, far tighter than it's ever been, and everyone entering with a cell phone is required to turn the phone on for Security to prove that it's a working unit and not a bomb. Of course, the battery in my phone had run out, so the guard had to take me over to the edge of the crowd where my phone was placed on a window ledge in front of a bomb-sniffing Labrador retriever. (Pretty dog.) The lab, fortunately, was completely uninterested in my phone, which was returned to me without incident.
That wasn't the religious experience, though. We sat high in the cheap seats behind the stage, which was set up without a backdrop so we could see fine. A heart-shaped red runway arced out into the crowd, creating an enclosure with the stage in the heart's two upper chambers and a lot of lucky fans in the lower chambers. Bono, of course, used the entire runway during the course of the show.
Early on in the show, during "Sunday Bloody Sunday," Bono was strolling down the lower reaches of the runway as the lads vamped toward the end of the song. Someone in the crowd at his feet was holding up an American flag. Bono reached down, took the flag, bowed his head, and cradled it in his arms. It was only the first time during the concert that tears pricked my eyes, but as he handed the flag back and resumed singing, the words could not have been more appropriate:
Wipe the tears from your eyes, wipe your tears away, wipe your bloodshot eyes.
I hate to throw around words like this, but it was the most uplifting concert I've ever seen.