Warm sun. My worship is a blue sky and 10,000 crickets in the deep wet hay of the field. My vow is the silence under their song. I admire the woodpecker and the dove in simple mathematics of flight. Together we study practical norms. The plowed and planted field is red as brick in the sun and says: "Now is my turn!" Several of us began to sing.
Driving home on a rainy day, Lorna was rear-ended by a truck just before the woman playing Rosina in Act I of the Barber of Seville was to sing. The impact was sudden and stunning. "But even as I entered a world of shock and pain, I found a world of bliss and order. I listened to the aria and fifteen minutes of the opera as firemen tried to free me from the wreckage of my car." Though told she had been unconscious until she was in the ambulance, she remembered listening to Rosina's voice throughout the ordeal. "My spirit stayed with my body. The music kept me alive. I was able to listen and stay conscious, alert, and at peace with the music. ... From the beginning of that aria, I knew I had to finish the opera of my life."