Tuesday, October 20, 2026
Refined living is tuned in. For those who play musical instruments, the harder you “try,” the worse it gets. Any kind of precision activity will ultimately need less if you want amazing results. I know the virtues of small corrections – minutia. For organists, pilots, athletes, and surgeons, minutia wins.
Being dialed in, so aligned that the wavelength is slender to a point of the Highest Light, is refinement. It’s a sliver of bliss, but blurred by conscious thought and bodily tension. It’s like getting through the eye of a needle but without a Hail Mary or white knuckles. You get through it as though you were lounging on the beach, but highly focused and immersed in minutia too small for “the sinner.” It’s the “thinner” who get through.
There are musical passages in Widor, Duruflé, and Bach, for example, where holding your breath, clutching your pearls, and forcing your way through never works. You can’t “barge in” by trying. You breeze through by practicing.
In life, clean passage through the narrowest slits will yield mammoth results. So many have tried to enter by force, to hold a Rosary tightly or to beg and plead. But in difficult passages, few sail while many are assailing. Try playing an entire trio sonata on the organ and not clamp down if something starts to unfurl. You must have impeccable skills upon which to rely.
If you want to get through the valley of the shadow of death, you practice. Your skills save you, not your prayers or your gods in the sky.
Refinement is practiced by the thinner. The sinner is too thickheaded, forcing themselves “on stage.” They’re trying too hard to make it, rather than developing a skill that allows them to “have it made” through diligence, care, and practice.
Never cut corners, you simply slow down and “build in” the ease.