"The Healing of Memory"

Pentimento has another good post and reflects on an excellent post by Fallen Sparrow. An excerpt from FS re the madness of the French Revolution:

'[R]eading those books and seeing the horrifying historical result of man's quest for Enlightenment on his own terms, absent any consideration other than exertion of force and scientific rationalism, I sensed through the smoke blowing uptown from Ground Zero my own mortality.

'Somewhere in the midst of that I became a religious man. Not a churchgoer, not yet, but I met God in the music of men who loved Him and sought to walk in His ways. In the midst of the bleakness of alcoholism and Enlightenment philosophy and history I found consolation in listening to J.S. Bach and Joseph Haydn. I fell asleep every night listening to Bach's 2nd Partita for Solo violin. At times when I was tempted to jump in front of a subway train, I remembered that I would never get to hear Bach again, and so I stepped back from the platform edge.'