These lines translated from Part Two of Goethe's Faust conclude the "Symphony of a Thousand" by Gustav Mahler (Symphony No. 8 in E flat major), recently performed live in my hometown. The production moved me to new heights, transforming the clatter of the day into sweet surrender to the existence of the heavenly. And judging from the standing ovation at the end, the power of the music moved even the reluctant ear:

Harmonic blending, rising crescendos, soft angelic strings—they all lifted me to the contemplation of perfection. A desire to define the infinite—to touch the infinite.

Physicists look for clues about the infinite in minuscule molecular objects that swim between something and nothing. Astronomers explore the edge of infinity in the vast sea called the cosmos. But I find glimmers of the holiest-of-holy in the beauty of sustained notes that hang in the atmosphere. Untouchable, pure—yet profoundly real and transforming.

What is that pristine combination of tone and acoustics that can transport our thoughts to a place without time or weight, far above the howling of mortal existence? More importantly, what does it suggest about the nature of existence?

Mahler wrote this symphony at a time of his own spiritual discovery. It was first performed on September 12, 1910, in Munich with 171 instrumentalists and 858 singers, and is described in terms of the artist's desire to "express the inexpressible": "I have just now completed my Eighth . . . [it] will be something the world has never heard the likes of before. All nature is endowed with a voice in it. . . . Imagine the universe beginning to ring and resound. It is no longer human voices. It is planets and suns revolving in their orbits . . ." (Egon Gartenberg, Mahler: The Man and His Music).

Of course, Mahler is not the only one who ever tried to touch the untouchable. In fact, Robert Levine, junior professor of humanities at Harvard University, observed in a recent lecture that "music points the way to places of which we dream" (Oregon Bach Festival, July 12, 2002, Eugene, Oregon). What intrigues me are the similarities I find in the ability and the power of both music—and prayer—to transport us out of material existence.

Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health: "Spiritual ideas, like numbers and notes, start from Principle, and admit no materialistic beliefs. Spiritual ideas lead up to their divine origin, God, and to the spiritual sense of being" (p. 298). For me, the holy time I spend in prayer reveals the existence of these ideas from God, and what I see defines the infinite as heavenly. Those lovely moments sing to me of the expansive and even glorious nature of the universe and of myself. They lift me out of drudgery and restore me to balance and equilibrium.

This time spent in prayer reveals much more than enjoyable thoughts. Profoundly real spiritual insights about the beauty and permanence of what God has created have, over time, transformed me. I've become more creative, joyful—confident of a divine, loving presence in my life. And somehow it's as if the beautiful music that defines my own nature as spiritual—as a participant in God's creation—plays louder and louder; drowning out the clamor of what once appeared to be a less-than-glorious human existence.

Perhaps, for me, beautiful music is what best whispers at the unbounded, radiant, lovely potential of an existence framed by God alone. Prayer is what illumines this existence as reality close enough to touch.