The Sanctifier and bright Lord who is glorious in operation, the dispositioner, the effector of all trans-substantiations, who sets the traverse wall according to the measure of the angel with the reed, who knows best how to gather his epiklesis from that open plain, who transmutes their cheerless blasphemy into a lover's word, who spoke by Balaam and by Balaam's ass, who spoke also by Sgt. Bullcock.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Praying dangerously
Q: Father, what do you think about when you serve Liturgy or those other services?
I would like to answer - to be in the position to answer - something along the lines of Louis Armstrong's words as quoted by Dave Brubeck:
Whenever he sat down at the piano— an instrument as satisfying, to him, as a whole orchestra—his aim was to get somewhere he had never got before. It didn’t matter how tired he was, how beat-up he felt. He wanted to be so inspired in his explorations that he would get beyond himself. He liked to quote Louis Armstrong, who once told a woman who asked what he thought about as he played: “Lady, if I told you, your mind would explode.” In his own words, he played dangerously, prepared to make any number of mistakes in order to create something he had never created before.
- from the obituary for David Brubeck in The Economist, Dec 15th 2012
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