The Healing Balm
Story★★★Author and Counselor Alan Loy McGinnis instructs his readers to take charge of their feelings, and choose to be optimists. This can be done, in part, by employing “uplifting music to lift your mood. . . . Music can be an important stimulant to optimistic thinking. Churches have always included singing in worship, and music is far more effective when the whole congregation sings rather than when they listen to a choir perform.
Singing reinforces one’s beliefs. “Horace spoke of music as ‘the healing balm of troubles.’ Congreve in The Morning Bride said, ‘Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast.’ Coleridge said, ‘I feel physically refreshed and strengthened by it.’ And Goethe, who was not particularly musical, said music made him unfold ‘like the fingers of a threatening fist which straighten amicably.’ “
The point
Uplifting, especially congregational, music serves as a powerful stimulant toward hope and optimistic thinking.