Numinous

Today I took the bus downtown to have lunch with two friends and hear the Ulster Orchestra’s lunchtime concert. Here’s the view from the bus stop:

I think I said something the other day about enjoying the frequent sight of green hills rising around Belfast, the bowl-bottom city. Today the hills were dusted with snow--a frequent sight in winter. I still get a kick out of this view. We live uphill from city centre, so this view is of Cave Hill on the west side of Belfast.

My two friends have worked abroad a great deal--one doing accounting audits in developing countries on behalf of charities and the other developing health care programs on behalf of WHO. It was great to sit back and listen to them compare notes on the difficulties of, say, dealing with mullahs in Iran or corruption in Sudan.

The concert itself (overtures by Von Weber and Rossini and an unfinished symphony by Schubert) was sublime. I just checked the definition of sublime and it said “inspiring awe or veneration.” Yep, that’s what I meant. I find classical music stirs such intense emotions that my mind goes into translation mode. To cope with the aural onslaught, my imagination creates scenes, as if I were watching a movie. I seem to experience classical music as a soundtrack for drama. Maybe that shows my lack of sophistication, but whatever.

I’m reading a book called A God in Ruins for one of my book clubs. A sister and brother leave the Albert Hall after hearing Beethoven’s Ninth. This is in the midst of WWII. The sister describes the concert as “numinous.” I had to look that up too: "having a strong religious or spiritual quality; indicating or suggesting the presence of a divinity.”

“There’s a spark of the divine in the world--not God, we’re done with God, but something. Is it love? Not silly romantic love, but something more profound?” the sister asks. The brother says maybe humans went wrong by trying to name the ineffable. He resolves that after the war (during which he has bombed German cities and watched many friends die), he would try to always be kind. “It was the best he could do. It was all that he could do. And it might be love, after all.”

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