While traveling through the beautiful Czech countryside, we have been coached in a few key words and phrases to use in Prague by our wonderful tour guide, Ondre. Then, as a special gift (or, so it feels to me) he put on the sound system Smetana’s stunning Ma Vlast, which is all that we are seeing out the windows of the bus converted into sound by one whose country it was. That, enhanced by the blessing of making music on a very high level with people I truly love, is filling my heart almost to a point of bursting.

As in the rhetorical ‘question’ posed by one of our songs: How, indeed, can any of us keep from singing! Surely, this is Life with a capital ‘L!’ Surely, it is this kind of joy that lives within us as that ‘quiet alleluia,’ that ‘crystal of peace’ . . . Surely, we are unusually blessed with the privilege of traveling with this as our reason.

Deborah