Symphonies aim at healing the soul by taking human emotions and concerns and, through the alchemy of art, make us somehow feel better about all of life--and us.Music touches something higher in us directly.All of the arts touch something that is beyond the ordinary machinations of life.And this "something higher and more" makes even the most homespun art somehow therapeutic.
Sitting there in silence, listening to the quiet, I was filled with a unique feeling of peace, an impression so intense that it seemed to expand into ineffable JOY. ...It went on, second after second, so pervasive that it seemed to fill my entire body. I relaxed into it luxuriated in it. Then with no warning, and surely without preparation or expectation, I knew what it was: for the seconds it lasted I felt, with a certainty I cannot account for, a sense of the presence of God.