welcome in my house

TwTwTw has received an email on the subject of my Hindemith juvenilia:

"The fact that very few masterworks display this congruence of
vision and materialization shows us that even the individual
possessing the greatest gift and the highest technical skill is not
always able to reach this goal."

UGH.

Please don't play with such thoughts in mind."

***

TwTwTw has had a different thought, sparked by the way the Hindemith sonata mostly evokes church architecture, the building itself and what is in and around it.

When I was in Poland, I stopped outside a church to ask a priest some directions.  He told me where to find my concert hall, but also took five minutes to chat with me and said something kind about my (awful) Polish. 

I have remembered his kindness - it sounds by-the-by, but strangely it wasn't, he sort of radiated deep kindness - and then in Strasbourg, in the cathedral - I think we have to have places where we can go, no matter who we are, or what we have done, and you are met by someone who says, you are welcome in my house.

God's love maybe says, whatever you have done, I will absolve you.  Most religions require you to repent to get that, which is the next step.  But to be able at the first instance to go inside a building, to be met by a human being, who says, my child, you are welcome in my house -

Well, I think that is important.