Journal for the Study of Spirituality

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Re-enchanting the world: Music and spirituality

June Boyce-Tillman

To cite this article: June Boyce-Tillman (2020) Re-enchanting the world: Music and spirituality,
Journal for the Study of Spirituality, 10:1, 29-41, DOI: 10.1080/20440243.2020.1726046
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Published online: 18 Mar 2020.

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JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF SPIRITUALITY
2020, VOL. 10, NO. 1, 29–41
https://doi.org/10.1080/20440243.2020.1726046

Re-enchanting the world: Music and spirituality

June Boyce-Tillmana,b
a
Applied Music, University of Winchester, Winchester, UK; bExtraordinary Professor, North-West University,
Potchefstroom, South Africa

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This article will examine the historical and contemporary literature in Music; spirituality; liminality;
this area, to produce a model of the phenomenography of the theology; religion;
musical experience which is linked with strands in the literature experience
exploring the relationship between religion and spirituality. It
interrogates the attitude of Christian theologians to the place of
music in worship and its relationship to the sacred. It charts the
move from this to a more generalised view of the spiritual
dimension of music linking these with cataphatic and apophatic
theological traditions. It uses frames from Buber’s view of
encounter and Turner’s notion of liminality to link strands in the
spirituality literature to the musical domains and the
transformative properties of the liminal space.

Introduction
The areas of religion, ethics or morality frequently interface in the literature (Biddington
2019). In this article there will be debates about the interface between spirituality and reli-
gion as well as spirituality uncoupled from religion (Zinnbauer and Pargament 2005;
Boyce-Tillman 2016).
Throughout the history of Western music, spirituality, religion and music have been
associated – from the ancient goddess traditions (Drinker [1948] 1995), through Plato,
and into Christianity through such figures as Hildegard (Boyce-Tillman 2000b). The
ancient Greek philosophers developed the idea of music and the spiritual philosophically.
Pythagoras, in his notion of three sorts of music, saw a resolution of the perceived division
between body, mind and spirit. Dionysius in The Celestial Hierarchies describes the angels
as participating in the nature and activity of the Godhead often by musicking (Small
1998) – reflecting the divine life immanent in all of the cosmos. The universe is singing
but we can pick up only part of it because some of it is beyond our hearing.
In the hands of the philosophers of the Enlightenment, the link between music and the
spiritual became weakened. The notion of the connection with the Divine now reappeared in
the human sphere and music and the aesthetic came to be about the highest expression of
human achievement. The spirits, once seen to be of the outer world, are now identified as
human personality traits and emotions, and the journey is internal (Harvey 1999, 71).
However, contemporary composers are reclaiming spiritual inspiration (Inglis 2019). The

CONTACT June Boyce-Tillman June.boyce-tillman@winchester.ac.uk

© 2020 British Association for the Study of Spirituality and Taylor & Francis
30 J. BOYCE-TILLMAN

work of the ‘holy minimalists,’ such as the composers Tavener (1944–2013) and Pärt
(b.1935), here become sounding icons for our time and generate prayerful responses
through a simplicity in musical construction that points to the ‘beyond.’ Hopps sees these
as ‘the ecstatic self-communication of the divine, which is everywhere always already addres-
sing us’ (Brown and Hopps 2018, 292–293). Music again becomes communicating with the
beyond and, as we shall see later, with other human beings and the natural world.

Spirituality, music and transformation

The possibility of transformation within the experience of music linked it into the burgeon-
ing concern for wellbeing, drawing on developments in psychology and the human potential
movement. The spiritual became associated with notions of self-actualisation (hooks 1994)
and self-fulfilment – as in Maslow’s (1967) hierarchy of human needs, in which he included
the aesthetic – the need for beauty, order, and symmetry. As secular Western culture edged
towards an aggressive individualism (Arnold 2014), a sense of finding some place in a larger
whole – the cosmos – started to emerge as a priority in the human search:
the aesthetic aspect of experience means a qualitatively different, fulfilling and inherently
meaningful mode of engagement in contrast to the mechanical, the fragmentary, the non-
integrated and all other nonmeaningful forms of engagement. Aesthetic is a transformational
concept meaning increased unity of experience. (Westerlund 2002, 191)

The crossing of a limen or threshold (Turner [1969] 1974) into a new way of knowing
offers a new way of being: ‘Here is perhaps the essence of transformation – that in this
magical place everyone can play with new identities, have fun and discover joy.’
(Boyce-Tillman 2016, 137).
Hills and Argyle (1998) conclude that religious and musical experiences are very
similar, citing such characteristics as ‘glimpsing another world’ and ‘loss of sense of self’:
Countless are the times great music has brought me spellbound to the ‘gates of Heaven’ – the
hush during a Beethoven symphony, a sermon in itself. I’ve often said that to me, a good
concert was far more full of awe – God, if you like, than many a church service. (RERC
archive)

Gabrielsson, in his in-depth study of musical experiences, starts to develop a typology for
musical experiences. It includes those of a spiritual or religious character, which can incor-
porate the transcendental and existential (Gabrielsson and Lindstrom 1993, 118–139).
These demonstrate the synergy between the aesthetic and the spiritual; for example, fol-
lowing a deep experience of a Sibelius symphony one person went into the woods to
thank God. Words like magical, mysterious, supernatural, extraterrestrial appear: ‘The
narrator feels as if he/she is put in a trance or ecstasy, there may be a feeling of totally
merging with something bigger and of glimpsing other worlds or existences (Gabrielsson
2011, 159). Such experiences are sometimes transformative; for example:
[A pop ballad] meant an end to years of battling with myself and all the others and everyone
around me … Ah! I found my way home. (Gabrielsson 2011, 157)

After the address came the hymn ‘All hail the power of Jesus’ name’. During the singing of it I
felt the power of God falling upon me. My sister felt it too, and said ‘ Floie, you’re going to
walk’. The Lord gave me faith then. (RERC archive)
 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF SPIRITUALITY 31

These often-surprising experiences communicating wider views of the Divine, can be

regarded as significant in a disenchanted world (Taylor 2007; Boyce-Tillman 2016).

The scope of this study

The twenty-first century search for meaning brought together music (and some other arts)
with the disciplines of theology and religious studies.1 However, definitions of spirituality
remain immensely difficult, because ‘studying spirituality appears akin to shovelling fog’
(Bender 2010, 182)
In a series of books (published by Peter Lang) on Music and Spirituality in the early
twenty-first century, I explore with others the relationships between spirituality and
music in a variety of traditions and contexts. Cross-disciplinary in nature, the series
addresses the plurality of modern society in the areas of musical style and philosophical
and religious beliefs, and gives respect to different positions regarding the place of
music both in worship and in the wider society. Spirituality and Music Education: Perspec-
tives from Three Continents (Boyce-Tillman 2017) charts how the notion of spirituality has
been struggling to find a way into educational thinking in a post-secularising world, using
an array of lenses. Enlivening Faith: Music, Spirituality and Christian Theology (Boyce-
Tillman, Roberts, and Erricker 2019) explores the connection of music to Christian spiri-
tuality from the beginning of the Christian tradition through various cultures. These books
show the increasing interest in the area, including the consequences of the idea of ‘the
death of God’ and the growth of the idea of a spirituality divorced from religion.

The sacredness of music

With the advancement of science in secularising Western culture, new links between
music and the sacred were being discovered in Eastern cultures; on these cultures the
twentieth century New Age (Boyce-Tillman 2000a, 155–166) and some areas of rock
and jazz traditions (Hamel [1976] 1978, 134–135) drew. This included a more holistic
view of the mind/ body/ spirit relationship, with transcendence approached through phys-
ical practices such as chanting or dancing.
Alongside this, in the twenty-first century an atheist spirituality developed that looks to
the arts for the role religion traditionally played. De Botton (2012, 5–6) acknowledges the
two important functions for religion – both extrapersonal in creating community and
intrapersonal in enabling people to survive the difficulties of life. De Botton’s hope is
that the arts might be as effective as religion in their ability to guide, humanise and
console; he sees them potentially as ‘secular society’s sacraments’ (De Botton 2012, 32).
Other debates around eudaimonia (wellbeing) and music return to ancient Greek phi-
losophers. Aristotle saw music as important in education because of both its role as amu-
sement and also the capacity of some melodies to ‘excite the soul to mystic frenzy.’ (1984,
2129). Plato, in Timaeus, saw music as influencing moral choices; so, for him, some music
was dangerous because it attached people to worldly rather than Divine forms, while other
music linked human beings to the Divine with such ideas as the harmony of the universe.
1
See the network entitled MSWInternational - an international network bringing together Music, Spirituality and Wellbeing.
https://musicspiritualitywellbeinginternational.wordpress.com/
32 J. BOYCE-TILLMAN

These ideas fed into Christian thinking in notions of an ideal beauty, particularly in the
thinking of Augustine (354–430 CE) and Boethius (c.480–524 CE) (Chadwick 1981, 80).
Augustine’s fear of the sensual was supported by such ideas; and they run through church
history in its fear of the body. In the mid-twentieth century these heated debates continued
in books such as Cleall’s Music and Holiness (1964). Discussion of music, worship, beauty
and God ended up dismissing popular song and dance as a lustful, dissipated sexual act
which excludes God, while jazz and swing were associated with the happiness of those
who cannot think!
Many contemporary writers are challenging these views (Roberts 2019; Himes 2019)
but the notion that sacredness is limited to certain musical styles, usually those of the
Western classical musical canon, is well established. Here, the ‘best’ music – often
judged by elitist standards – assumes a status that is higher than words. This article
takes the widest possible view of what constitutes music. I see this definition as residing
in the mind of the musicker and therefore, potentially, including natural sounds such
as birdsong, as well as the multitude of styles created by human cultures. Contemporary
compositions designed for meditation and relaxation often include natural sounds.
In some of these debates, particularly those in ecclesiastical circles, there is a concen-
tration on words as the defining feature of sacredness. Some of these are around the rela-
tive importance of text and music, and whether the music obscures text (through elaborate
settings) or enhances it (Burch Brown 2018, vi). It can also be about the nature of the text.
Begbie (2000) requires music to be theologically specific to be considered sacred or truly
spiritual. He has devoted a great deal of skilled musicological analysis to support this claim
but his position limits the scope of the sacred so much that even Messiaen’s Quartet for the
end of time (1941) does not find a place.
Elsewhere, there is development of Augustine exaltation of music’s power to express the
ineffable – that which cannot be expressed in words – which reveals aspects of the beauty
of the Divine. So, not only was some music considered demeaning in its sensuality, but
other music was seen as having sublime qualities. As the status of purely instrumental
music rose in the Romantic period, a contemplative style of listening developed that
could be seen as ‘a form of devotional exercise’ (Dahlhaus 1989, 94). These views are
still alive today (Boyce-Tillman 2019) and fit well with the elevation of the Western clas-
sical tradition as supremely sacred, often drawing on experiences of Christian theologians
(Kung 1992). In this decontextualised thinking, certain pieces will generate a spiritual
experience whatever the context. However, it is also true that some of these works have
been able to communicate across histories and cultures.
So, within the thinking about music and theology in Western culture, we see a mixture
of more clear, rational relationships between music and the Divine (a cataphatic tradition);
and a more mysterious relationship, with the development of a religion-less spirituality
including a greater degree of unknowing – apophasis – drawing on the work of psychol-
ogists such as James ([1902] 1997).
The music that opens up these new non-verbal realms can be drawn from all styles –
religious, secular, post-secular, sentimental and kitsch. Although musical cultures are
varied, the non-verbal nature of music can aid its mysterious cross-cultural communi-
cation. In Levi-Strauss’s (1970, 18) terms: ‘Music is a language by whose means messages
are elaborated … Music is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being at
once intelligible and untranslatable.’
 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF SPIRITUALITY 33

This opens up the possibility of the reconciliatory potential of music:

We will explore in depth a particular case in Crimea, during which Guided Imagery and
Music (GIM) was introduced at a critical phase of a dialogue with Chechen, North Ossetian
and Russian participants … We want to demonstrate the transformation of group emotional
tensions into a flowing ‘moment’ called ‘collective vulnerability’. (Jordanger 2007, 129)

So, there is a growing body of literature that explores the relationship between music and
Christian theology and spirituality, including such diverse views as those of Begbie (2000,
2007) and Brown and Hopps (2018) as well as more generalised approaches (Foley 2015).
These reflect the multiplicity of ways in which spirituality is conceived today.

The spirituality of music

Van der Merwe and Habron (2017), in their seminal article reviewing the literature on
music education and spirituality, distil the categories of relationality, spatiality, temporality
and corporeality as representing the interlinked lifeworlds of the human being. They
emphasise the embodiment of human creativity. Matsunobu (2011, 281) – expert in the
Japanese shakuhachi sacred flute tradition – talks about the importance of breath in achiev-
ing ‘personal and spiritual maturity through the realization of the “ultimate tone”.’
Spatiality links an imagined space, which Van der Merwe and Habron (2017) associate
with awe, wonder, and suprarationality. Kettleborough (2019) extends this to planetary
and cosmic awareness (see Figure 2). This links the spiritual experience with prayer and
meditation (Lancaster 2004; Matsunobu 2011).
Temporality is at the very heart of the musical experience, which is, in essence, a re-
structuring of time: ‘If music is the most fundamentally contemplative of the arts, it is
not because it takes us into the timeless but because it obliges us to rethink time. (Williams
1994, 250, original italics). Music is a kind of organisation of audible material in time and
within a particular culture (Feki 2011, 52). The process of creating music is itself a way of
expressing our emotional life through re-ordering it, as in Smetana’s second quartets
which were written in an asylum (Boyce-Tillman 2016, 393): ‘In adopting these contrast-
ing and complementary processes composers bring creative order to chaos, ambiguities,
and conflicts within them.’ (Kemp 1996, 216)
A particular culture sets up the ways in which ideas are communicated musically. In
human development, infant musicking is the way that infants start their understanding
of time, with an understanding of reality that is ‘preconceptual and participatory’ (Love
2003): ‘Musical improvisation will continue to embody the same significance throughout
the lifetime of the person, evoking a primordial memory, because musical improvisation is
the activity in which unconscious memories of babbling are carried into later life’ (Love
2001, 155)
In Theology, Music and Time, Begbie (2000, 271) sees music’s temporality as providing
the theologian with ‘Conceptual tools – ways of thinking, models, frameworks, metaphors
– for exploring, clarifying and re-conceiving the dynamics of God’s world and his ways
with the world.’ Van der Merwe and Habron’s theme of journeying indicates movement
through time and space:
The notion of journey is present (‘where we are going’), as is the joyful emotion of ‘profound
happiness.’ The experience of improvisation as processual and ongoing can be interpreted as
34 J. BOYCE-TILLMAN

a flow state (‘Sounds enter me and carry me. I make no distinction between the music and
myself’). The lived experience of time shifts … A sense of eternality is therefore present.
(Van der Merwe and Habron 2017, 41)

Relationality and connection are a recurring theme in the literature (Quindag 2019). It is
here that my own journey into understanding spirituality began, looking at Buber’s
concept of the I-Thou encounter. The phenomenography (Marton and Booth 1997,
129) set out below illustrates the multiple connections and communications generated
by musicking. Here we also see claims for self-transcendence and through that the devel-
opment of meaning and vocation (Van Manen 1990, 105).

Spirituality in the musical experience

I have developed similar strands to understand the nature of the spiritual experience in
musicking as including:

. METAPHYSICAL – the relationship with the mystery of the beyond.

. INTRAPERSONAL – concerns empowerment, energising, bliss and realisation, virtues
such as hope and transformation.
. INTERPERSONAL – a sense of belonging and empathy and the development of virtues
such as empathy, love, compassion, forgiveness and hope.
. INTERGAIAN2 – a sense of oneness and deep relationship with the other-than-human
world.
. EXTRAPERSONAL/ETHICAL – the interconnectedness of all things resulting in the
finding of ultimate meaning.
. NARRATIVE – the fund of ‘story’ in which individuals ‘dwell’ and that constitutes the
primary reference for religious identity, often associated with a particular religious
identity.
. TRADITION – practices associated originally with a religious tradition such as prayer
practices and rituals.

It is the presence or absence of Narrative and Tradition elements that determine

whether a person defines themselves as spiritual but not religious, or spiritual and
religious.
My view brings together both apophatic and cataphatic approaches to music’s spiritual-
ity. The musical experience becomes one of encounter, drawing on Buber’s (1997, 57)
concept of the power of the I/Thou relationship, and relationality – the ability to commu-
nicate in various domains. This relationship for Levinas (1969, 33) represented an encoun-
ter with infinity.
In my phenomenography of the musical experience (Boyce-Tillman 2004), I see a
number of possibilities for encountering:

. anOther self or selves – the feelings and emotions encompassed within the music
(EXPRESSION) – Intrapersonal
2
This is drawing on the usage of Primavesi (2008) and other ecotheologians.
 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF SPIRITUALITY 35

. anOther culture – which may be separate from us historically or geographically or

clearly enacted within a particular space in which the music takes place such as a
church or a wood (VALUES) – Extrapersonal
. A world of abstract ideas – in the way all the sounds are fitted together (CONSTRUC-
TION) which can enable us to journey through the music effectively – Intrapersonal
. The environment – in instruments made of wood, plastic, metal, and the human body
with its movement and breath (MATERIALS) – InterGaian

If these encounters are effectively achieved3 for the musicker the Spiritual domain
(the Metaphysical) is entered. This phenomenographic map enables us to see all
music as spiritual and exposes the dilemma of the concept of a universal spiritual
music. It is this potential spiritual experience – resting primarily in relationality
rather than exclusively within the nature of the sounds themselves – that underpins
claims that music is a universal language: ‘spirituality [is] the universal language of
music’ (Matsunobu 2011, 275).
If, when musicking, we can negotiate a relationship with all these domains, we enter
another way of knowing, which can be called liminality – or spirituality (Figure 1).
Van Gennep (1908) saw parallel stages in any ritual of ‘severance, transition and return’
in which the transitional space is transpersonal and consciousness-changing. Turner
([1969] 1974), drawing on this analysis of ritual, described this as having the character
of dwelling for extended periods of time in a spatial, social and spiritual threshold, like
pilgrims. Turner called the space liminal, a term which, for me, is interchangeable with
the spiritual domain. In the liminal/spiritual space, we are taken out of ‘everyday’ con-
sciousness with its concerns for food, clothing and practical issues and moved into
another dimension.
Clarke (2005, 93) calls it a transliminal way of knowing (Thalbourne et al. 1997). In her
thinking, this way of knowing is to do with our ‘porous’ relation to other beings and with
embracing, rather than being concerned by, paradox. Kettleborough (2019) has extended
the concept of the spiritual to the cosmic (Figure 2).

Spirituality, religion, culture and music

So the spirituality of the musical experience is one negotiated between the music and the
musicker. It involves being transported into another space/time dimension which is
different from the one in which ordinary life is lived (a liminal space). Any aspect of
the music may support or hinder the experience. For example, the Materials used may
be unacceptable or too unfamiliar to the musicker, like an instrument from a very
different culture. The Expression may be unacceptable, such as an association of the
music with some unpleasant experience. The Construction of the music may be incompre-
hensible, or the Value systems be beyond the cultural experience of the musicker, or the
3
To take Allegri’s choral piece Miserere from sixteenth-century Italy: in the area of ‘Materials’, it consists of a choir. In the
area of ‘Expression’, it is peaceful with fluctuations as the plainchant verses come in. In the area of ‘Construction’, it is an
alternating psalm with full harmonic verses and plainchant alternating verses. This is intimately related to its role as a
psalm liturgically. In the area of ‘Value’, it is held as a masterpiece within the Western canon of music; it is frequently
recorded and achieves a place in classical music charts; and it represents an important statement about the Christian’s
attitude to penitence, based on a Jewish psalm, especially as expressed at the beginning of the penitential season of Lent.
It has a declared Spiritual intention.
36 J. BOYCE-TILLMAN

Figure 1. The complete spiritual experience in music (Boyce-Tillman 2016, 129).

performance venue seen as unsatisfactory. Religious affiliation sits in this domain and can
limit the range of musics that enable access to the Divine for the musicker (Begbie 2000,
271). It can be reached by composing/improvising, performing or listening – every form of
musicking. This space has potential for deep transformation.
This transformative possibility has led to an increase in the use of music in healthcare –
re-enchanting the medicalised world. In the Elevate programme in Salisbury Hospital, for
example, members of the hospital staff were actively observed taking part in the musicians’
sessions, just by singing a song with the musicians or improvising, as well as using music to
distract patients during difficult procedures. Artists working in Salisbury hospital saw
physical changes even in their facial muscles as they recreated this spiritual world for
their patients. Wright and Sayre-Adams (2009, 29) describe music as a soul food, includ-
ing using soft background music for relaxation and using music to establish right relation-
ship with carers. There is ground-breaking work in music with the dying, especially the
development of Threshold Choirs singing around hospice beds to create a sacred
liminal space enclosing all present.
The transformation may be gradual, especially when the material is from a different
culture as in this account of sitar concert:
 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF SPIRITUALITY 37

Figure 2. Linking the spiritual experience of music to the planet and cosmos (Boyce-Tillman 2016, 129;
adapted by Kettleborough 2019, 198).

For the first twenty-five minutes I was totally unaware of any subtlety … What did happen
was magic! After some time, insidiously the music began to reach me. Little by little, my
mind all my senses it seemed - were becoming transfixed. Once held by these soft but power-
ful sounds, I was irresistibly drawn into a new world of musical shapes and colours. It almost
felt as if the musicians were playing me rather than their instruments, and soon, I, too, was
clapping and gasping with everyone else … I was unaware of time, unaware of anything other
than the music. Then it was over. But it was, I am sure, the beginning of a profound admira-
tion that I shall always have for an art form that has been until recently totally alien to me.
(Dunmore 1983, 20–21)

This account shows how the strands in spirituality, identified earlier in this article, are acti-
vated by the musical experience that embraces them all. My model shows how the entry
into the Spiritual domain depends on a person’s enculturation and training, but may
transcend it.
The cultural place of religious music – whether sung or listened to – means that some
people who no longer subscribe to the doctrinal tenets of a faith may still be transported by
religious music because of the way it relates to their identity: ‘At the age of 88 years I am
38 J. BOYCE-TILLMAN

practically religionless except that most days I am obsessed with Moody and Sankey
hymns.’ (RERC archive 1970)
For many older people now, hymns learned in childhood have a reminiscence power
regardless of contemporary personal belief; so, a hymn like Praise my soul the King of
Heaven was used for many services like weddings and funerals for much of the twentieth
century and may still transport people into the Spiritual domain. It is allied to a relational
sense of belonging:
I am one of those boys state educated in the 40s and 50s who came by the words of Ancient
and Modern through singing them day in and day out at school every morning in assembly
… I have never found it easy to belong. So much repels. Hymns help, they blur. (Bennett
2001)

Verbal descriptions of certain musics in accompanying notes may also help to create reli-
gious/spiritual experiences: ‘In our culture the importance of the religious origins of par-
ticular music may simply be the result of the increasing dependence our society has on
words for entering the musical experience’ (Blake 1997, 7). In other contexts it appears
out of the blue:
Somehow the singing wore down all the boundaries and distinctions that kept me so isolated.
Sitting there, standing with them to sing, sometimes so shaky … that I felt like I might tip
over. I felt bigger than myself, like I was being taken care of, tricked into coming back to
life. (Lamont 1999, 47–48)

Even in a religious context, music may not demand subscription to a theological tradition
to take us to a place of transcendence:
If you happen upon a Cathedral and stay for Evensong, the glory of Tavener’s music can
come as sheer grace. You are simply invited to let it anoint you with its costly perfume. It
is a gift. No one is demanding anything first, checking your fitness or looking for the right
answers. A door is opened in heaven. It is a moment of Christ-inspired generosity. The
kingdom is offered without restriction or condition. (Atwell, Unpublished)

Summary
This article has explored the varied and various relationships made between music and
spirituality. It has traced this through the history of Western thought and challenged
the notion of a universal sacred music in favour of a sacredness generated by relationality
and encounter that is possible through most musical traditions. It offers the possibility of
music in the contemporary world functioning in a way that was once regarded as the
domain of religion; this opens up the use of music as a medium for transformation in a
variety of contexts.
I captured one of these moments in a poem following a cathedral concert:
I went to the garden as the sun was descending …
It was as if the great ferns had grown longer and greener
It was as if the greening power of the earth was everywhere – filling the world with
love and strength
It was as if the entire world was singing
It was as if I loved everything and everything loved me
It was as if I had found the place I was really meant to be
 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF SPIRITUALITY 39

It was as if I was in the place just right – the valley of love and delight
It was as if God had made me just for this moment
It was as if I was alive for the first time
It was as if I saw the world made new
It was as if the garden enclosed me and held me safe
It was as if everything was higher than it had ever been
It was as if everything was cool
It was as if nothing mattered but this one moment of Divine promise.
(Boyce-Tillman 2016, 265)

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor
Rev Dr June Boyce-Tillman MBE, PhD, MA, LRAM, FRSA, FHEA is Professor Emerita of Applied
Music, University of Winchester, UK; Extraordinary Professor at North-West University, South
Africa; and Convenor of Music, Spirituality and Wellbeing International.

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