I just finished writing a novella, the theme of which is forgiveness. An American missionary nun, caught in crossfire between opposing forces in the civil war that ravages a Central American country, writes a long letter to her sister, also a nun and her Mother Superior, in the United States. All through the writing of The Passion of Sister Barbara, I had been listening to music.

Music plays on my Internet radio all the time I am writing. I listen to two types of music—opera and Sinatra, what’s been called recently “The Great American Songbook.” Both are classic in their categories. Both give me enormous support for my work, encouraging me to do my best. I can’t imagine writing an essay, an article, or a book without having music playing. I write with my headphones on.

From opera I get the surging emotions of heightened dramatic moments: love, death, passion, fear, and triumph. It is over-the-top in its depiction of crisis, despair, longing, and all the other great human moods that move our lives. It pushes me to explore those deep regions where we begin to approach an understanding of who we are, why we are here, and where we are going. What could be more wrenching than the end of Madame Butterfly, when the Japanese heroine at last discovers, in a crushing blow, that her American husband has forsaken her and married a “proper” American wife?