Thanks, Don, for your suggestion of the word empathy. Empathy might well be a precondition for what I'm trying to describe with one word but it doesn't include the heightened emotions of the experience. I'm trying to find a word for the experience of being in a small singing group and being so together, so connected, so beautiful it kicks everyone up a notch in both emotion and production or craft, similar to what Leeneia described.

So I went to Roget's and could not find a word that did the experience justice. Concord, consonance, rapport, empathy point in the right direction but don't include the elevated emotional component. Ecstasy, thrill, elation, and passion satisfy the emotional part but leave out the community or group part. Communion has too much religious baggage; soul has Motown baggage.

I dunno. Is there one word that can do it justice? Or is it one of those ineffible (sp?) experiences that takes a whole sentence to describe?

Sorry to be splitting hairs. I love singing and I love words. It seems to me that the words fall short here.

But the experience is wonderful, powerful, almost incandescant.

David