Dona Eis Requiem

Tonight, as on most nights, I turned on iTunes and let it deal randomly from its deck of shuffled albums. And so it was that I was dealt Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony, Mozart's Requiem and Secret Garden's brilliant Once In A Red Moon. All three in a row. I am now listening to the Mannheim Steamroller Christmas Celebration of 1984.

It puts one in a reflective, peaceful mood. Some might consider the sequence grim, sorrowful, depressing. Not I. It grants me a measure, indeed a long and powerful draught, of peace and quiet contentment. And this experience has been so moving in its stillness that I am stirred in my soul to wish peace upon all houses at war, all houses in uproar and unrest, in all the world, in all the minds and hearts of men. Amen.