Our world is so full of conditions
—
demands, requirements, and obligations
that we often wonder what is expected of us.
But when we meet a truly free person
[a truly giving person]
there are no expectations,
only an invitation
to reach into ourselves
and discover there
our own freedom.
~ from Bread for the Journey by Henri Nouwen, as quoted in "Thin Places" Sept/Oct/Nov 2010
Nadia Boulanger once described a Menuhin recital: He gave a number of encores, and the last was the slow movement of Brahm's Sonata in D minor. What happened then was part of an indescribable completeness. The whole house found itself in the grip of the same mute emotion, which created silence of an extraordinary quality. Everyone understood, felt, participated in what he himself must have been feeling." Menuhin has always possessed this quality. Even as a child, his playing had an innate innocence (which is still intact) that made Einstein declare that, hearing him play, he knew there was a God.