If there is a god, I believe it communicates through music. The dulcet sounds of a piano, the rapture of a choir, the earthshaking beat of tympani or the cacophony of an orchestra. Bird song, too. And the wind. And all our attempts as wee-humans to mimic it all, and sometimes come close and sometimes go further, and all of the time reach for something that can move the heart and soul to a greater understanding of who we are and what we can be. And in this journey of reaching for the sound, the music, the voice, we find the only path is through the onrush of love and the full rush of forgiveness. Music, well done, with intention and caprice, can be a light guiding us into ourselves and leading us back out more whole.

For me, music is human’s most generous and healing gift. It communicates across borders and touches people no matter what their faith, sex, language, race. I think of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and how this one piece of music has moved millions to tears and a stunned supplication as choirs sing to the joy of being human. Leonard Bernstein played the Ninth in tribute to the end of the Cold War; mothers would sing the Chorale of the Ninth outside the walls of Pinochet’s prisons, defying tyranny and risking death. Throughout the world, musicians are showing up in plazas and railroad stations, surprising and delighting onlookers with impromptu performances of this grand piece of music. And in those plazas we find peace, joy, camaraderie, love, and a precious and uncompromising beauty. I know cruel things occur in places of beauty: the Killing Fields of Cambodia, The Trail of Tears, the mass graves found in Bosnia, Poland, Russia, and the Ukraine. Music may be a way—a passage—a common plane we can walk on with bare arms raised in appreciation versus anger.