Brian’s Reflection: April 18, 2007


As a boy I remember how terribly real the statues of the saints
would seem at 7 o'clock Mass - before I'd had breakfast. From
that I learned always to conduct hungry.

- Leopold Stokowski, musician & composer, born
on this day, 1882, in England



Satiety dulls reality. That seems to be Stokowski’s message. According to all great teachers of the soul’s truth, he is correct. Morning is a spare time. I remember how I would go down to the crypt to “serve mass” for some of the older fathers at Holy Cross. Spooky. And you know what? I have always appreciated spooky! I have both of my congregations ringing bells at the Elevations. Alas, I can’t have the place foggy with incense; a couple of people say that they will collapse and die of throat clogging – and I in my pastoral concern “give in”. But there is a part of me that says, “Crap!”. Wear a mask! Allergies, for me, are just a work of the Devil keeping people (and through them, the rest of us) from plunging into the Mystical. If you remove the senses from experiencing the Divine ………. trouble!

One should live one’s Life “hungry”. Just as Stokowski conducted hungry. Because ….. “hungry “ means “wired”, attune to Mystery, because one is not dulled by Satiety of mind, spirit, heart - dulled by the soddening effect of the claims of complacency, of the glazing effect of sensory overload.

“Statues” (i.e., Life) look(s) “terribly real” before breakfast - when we are cleansed, before we are clogged with spiritual “fat” of all sorts.

It is with, and from, this clarity that we should conduct our Life. The results are to be longed for. Listen to Stokowski. The music crackles, freed from the fatty occlusions of sentimentality.

Life is meant to crackle.

Brian+