I suppose I am drawn to music as a means of faith because I have so many questions, so many doubts. I have never been nor do I suspect I will ever be a person of utter certitude. Music allows room for me to breathe. It has fewer borders, more relaxed boundaries.

If, as Rabbi Heschel once said, "Every statement that begins, 'God is...' is always an understatement", then music both admits and celebrates its inability to fully comprehend God.

I suppose that is also why I've always preferred the abstract over realism when it comes to religious art. This past summer our family went back to the magnificent cathedral in Chartres. We worshiped one Sunday morning under the flying buttresses, bathed in that holy blue light and it was, I think, a heavenly experience, a foretaste of the feast to come.

Afterwards, we strolled behind the reredos, the wall behind the altar. On it there are exquisite stone carvings of Christ's life which I found interesting but hardly as inspiring as that just completed worship experience. In fact, and this is probably sacrilegious, my daughter and I couldn't help but quietly chuckle when we looked at one carved scene of Jesus' ascension.

It had the disciples all looking up as these two feet dangled from the top of the frame.

Somehow, the mystery and magnificence of the resurrected Christ is severely diminished when it is reduced to this kind of literalism.

It was St. Augustine who said, "Before experiencing God you thought you could talk about God; when you begin to experience God you realize that what you are experiencing you cannot put into words."