school of silence

“There is another school
where the soul must go
to learn its best eternal lessons.
It is the school of silence.
‘Be still and know,’
said the psalmist,
and there is profound philosophy there,
of universal application.”

~ A.W. Tozer, The Set of the Sail.

The simplest sojourns lend themselves to becoming intricate adventures, when moving with the moment. Amidst gift occasions of unstructured time, deepest learning can take root. My responses to the sudden possession of earned and rare leisure reverts me to reverent wonders of times past. Especially at school, though it has easily transferred to employment life. It is a childlike joy, even to old souls, to freely look up to unimpaired skies and mid-day colors outside the usual walls and fences. Undemanding unstructure is so unusual to many of us that the very context generates an inherent exhilaration.

Open air and open-ended days are rare treasures for those who toil in the trenches from which remuneration must be drawn. The light and air of a late morning is for the exultation of the unconfined, and perhaps lives of constant work are best able to find and savor contrasts. Gazing up from labyrinthine constriction, horizons cannot intimidate. Promise, potential, and newness of life manifest mysteriously in the form of a clear slate. I’m reminded of this each and every time I’ve made an arrival at a place of retreat. Reaching a desired destination generates an incidental excitement, along with gratitude for the careful purpose of repose. During last week, I experienced a retreat that was warmly familiar yet ever new, an immersion into substantial silence at the center of a large city. Through seasonal frozen New England air, I arranged an intermission from my work and travelled to a week’s sojourn in Boston. My destinations and the winter ambience provided wise silences from which I found learning and consolation.

Beacon Hill Friends House
Above: Beginning of snowstorm;
Below: During snowstorm.

The waystations of my week of retreat, cozy as home, included my esteemed Boston Athenaeum for days of reading in their rare books room, lodging amidst the lively community life of the Beacon Hill Friends House- with its sacred spaces, mornings with the Divine Hours at the Church of the Advent, and all points in between on Beacon Hill. An unanticipated element came late in the week, with the arrival of a 28" snow blizzard. The elements did fit serendipitously well together, amounting to a composite of comparable settings of nourishing and needed quiet. Travelling by train during post-commuter hours, on the journey from Maine combined late-morning hush with astonishing sunlight- surely outside the realm of countless workdays.

Alighting at North Station, my first stop was to settle in at the Friends House and deliver desserts I baked in gratitude for the always welcoming “Housies.” From there, I walked to the Athenaeum to deliver more desserts for the library staff. If I have any influence in this vast world, one thing I can surely do is to express my thankfulness. Having planned the travel well in advance, a shelf of ancient tomes awaited my arrival in the Special Collections reading room. With each of these reading retreats, anticipatory reviews of the Athenaeum’s catalogue allow me to create themes with diverse reading materials. During one retreat I read journals written by Quaker adventurers of the 1600s, and on another week’s sojourn I sought the fascinating literary colors of Richard Baxter. This time, I sought personal inspiration, choosing 16th and 17th century reading that emphasized perseverance, faith, and conscience.

Boston Athenaeum, during snowstorm.

Within the Athenaeum library, a sanctuary in itself, the rare books room is an inner sanctum available only during weekdays. In between acclimating to reading Elizabethan English on four hundred year old paper, I reminded myself to look around the high-ceilinged room. Beneath large oil paintings and skyward windows, a polished wooden table supported study lamps and cradled the folios open before me. Facing up to me from the great many pages I read were insights and exhortations from across the ages. John Preston’s words from the early 1600s reached my 21st century eyes, and I pencilled them verbatim into my notes:

“We have but a short time to live in this world, the strength of our mind is the most precious thing we have, the thoughts and affections that we have, the business, the activeness of our minds; we should be careful to improve them, we should be careful that none of this water run beside the mill. That is, that it be not bestowed upon things that are unworthy of it.”

Above: My reading notes from the rare books room.
Below: Writing in the Friends House library, lit by snow.

Only pencil and loose paper leaves are permitted in the rare books room. I even had to leave my binder outside the room, though now it has 22 new pages of notes and quotations from a week’s worth of reading 5 different books by as many different authors. My daytime hours were arranged around these studies, and as news of the impending blizzard solidified, I changed my reading sequence, and the Athenaeum reference staff very kindly adjusted their coverage of the rare books room to for me to maximize my time. By the time I could see snow billowing outside the large reading room windows, causing the library to cancel operations for the day- and the following days- I had completed my reading. The weather really did not disappoint any plans, but actually provided contemplative time after my intense studies. There was just enough time to visit a dear old friend, whose chaplaincy at Northeastern University includes The Sacred Space which provides healthful solitude and refuge for his community. The balance of my week’s time, under heavy snow, was open to visiting, writing, and walking.

Church of the Advent, at left.

Two days of unrelenting snowfall silenced the large city, as well as the entirety of New England. I had the unusual benefit of being at the center of an arm’s-reach downtown neighborhood which did not experience outages, and at leisure. My daily attendance at the Church of the Advent’s morning vigil continued, thanks to the rector lending me his snow galoshes. The Friends House community itself was in a pleasant snowbound mode, making the best of things with potluck meals and rotating shoveling duties. Their large kitchen is very much a livingroom. Continuing as a pilgrim retreatant, I was able to enjoy the House’s own library, take photographing walks through snowfilled streets, and write during mid-day hours. Reviewing my Athenaeum notes, I noticed how often Preston would return to the Genesis 17 reference to “God is all-sufficient,” as though a sung refrain in his work, “The Saint’s Daily Exercise.” Francis Atterbury, also among my readings, emphasized “acquaint thy self with God,” over and again in “An Acquaintance with God the Best Support Under Afflictions.” My places of quiet contemplation varied, though qualitatively they were entirely consistent.

In his journal, which I studied at the Athenaeum, Daniel Stanton (an 18th century Quaker) described his travels through Colonial era New England. Indeed, I had to look up and enjoy my window views when I read his words from 250 years ago: “I was somewhat detained by a storm of snow; when it moderated, I got forward.” On a following page he wrote, “I enjoyed great comfort of mind, and near unity with Friends... it bespoke a day of visitation of God’s love, and I wish it may be ‘as bread cast upon the waters, that it may be found after many days.’” Throughout the week, and along the hushed northbound train home, the idea of deep learning through contemplative silence continued emerging in my thoughts. The savoring of silence is itself a schooling. It requires shutting away distractions and departing from noise we otherwise adaptively absorb. Yet the goodness in being immersed in goodness has lasting effects. The reminders have followed my steps and will lead my subsequent steps toward future sojourns.

At Beacon Hill Friends House.

l’idéal

“If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools...”

~ Rudyard Kipling, If

(The calligraphy
and illustrations
for Kipling's poem
were done by me
when I was 15.)

open questions

Open questions are investigative queries with which we must evolve. I refer to open as differentiated from open-ended. In the field of information sciences, the opposite of a closed-ended question is an enquiry that demands more than a statistical answer. Open-ended often implies a comparison, and surely more than a simple yes or no. But a matter that is entirely open may require protracted and lived research; there may not even be an apparent answer. The element of time can alter long-abiding questions. Over spans of years, I’ve mulled various advising words of parents and directives of teachers, walking with their meanings. In less abstract ways, I’ve seen myself change travel routes after better comprehending roads, highway systems, and compass directions. From the depths of spiritual life, why questions (“why am I here?”) have led to what questions (“what am I to do?”), then on to how questions (“how shall this happen?”), and when questions (“when does the terrain level off?”). Surveying the vast waters in all directions brings to mind questions of expectations.

When comparing long-held hopes with my lengthening road of lived findings thus far, I am brought to question all my expectations. Repeatedly high aspirations are repeatedly disappointed. Perhaps it is a question of standards, and perhaps some compromises must be made. But a descent to the latter would happen with heavyhearted reluctance. Only now, I’ve begun to weigh the double-edge of idealism. With hopes set very high, combined with ardent work ethics, those plunges that spiral unrequitedly down are deep drops. Yet I seem to insist upon holding fast to ideals, sure of their practicability.

idealist

("walk with kings and not lose the common touch.")

But idealism has some mixed connotations. Dictionary definitions dryly treat idealism as the opposite of realism. Granted, an idea often does stand in opposition to sensible reality. Still more, the ideal can float far beyond the conceptual idea itself. As looming summits of cascades, and distant islands of green, profoundest aspirations dwell enshrined. These are reference points with which sense, assessment, and correction can be sounded and fathomed- albeit without the power of ever attaining to the ideal’s perfection. What if there weren’t ideals? I dare say that would confine souls to a terribly uninspired rendition of limited and tangible realism. Idealism provides context to perceived reality. The deserted expanses and aridity in everyday life cause the soul to consider the spiritual to be the centrally vital factor in reality.

While I hold to ideals that elevate fairness, honesty, egalitarianism, artistic creativity, and holiness, there are no delusions as to their consistent practice and reciprocity. Idealism does indeed come with a warning label. There will be disappointments; they very well may occur at each and every turn. There may be every good reason to renounce those ideals and let cynicism prevail. But I will do no such thing. Remembering Kipling’s immortal poem, “If,” though I’ll make allowance for doubting, I’ll continue to wait and not be tired by waiting, will not deal in lies, or give way to hating, but rather persevere even in defeat to start again at my beginnings. Too clearly in prominent thoughts are fellow idealists, such as my friends who live the monastic community life. Their commitments to their sacred ideals exceed whatever trials they have. I’ve been ceaselessly impressed at how they are able to keep all their routines and rituals fresh and new. Then I recall St. James’ guideline about embodying generosity while keeping oneself unpolluted by the world.*

Much has filled my sights to give me more conflicts to sift through. In response, my abilities to filter and discern must proportionately increase. Emerging from my thoughts in recent weeks is whether or not idealism and maturity are divergent roads. Can noble and benevolent aspirations superimpose with experience and growth? I wonder how to continue aligning these threads. Struggle mustn’t necessarily produce callousness. Neither should isolation. Too often a by-product of professional elitism is the harming of its respective profession. Titles frequently tend to dissuade their contents. Educators that claim highest formal credentials ironically lead the charge to remove manual skills from our hands. Professional license, it seems, paves ways to discard reading and practical arts without challenge. In a further show of irony, pastorates assuming leadership in spiritual communities notoriously cannot communicate or foster community spirit. Perhaps the status of “seasoned pro” requires desensitization. There are surely downsides to Babel-like structures that excessively formalize. I’m reminded of how my childhood classmates and I decided to opt out of little leagues because we wanted to enjoy playing baseball. Nothing like a childlike mind to see through artifice.

idealism personalized

("risk a heap of winnings to lose and start again.")

As we develop our intellectual lives, continue to grow, and sense the Spirit within, our ideals form in a naturally cultivated parallel. Just as goals are wished for, they are tested; and amidst the trials that accumulate with advancing forays into the world, these aspirations are endangered. During sojourns through thickest Maine forests, I’ve admired how wildflowers such as “lady’s slippers” persistently emerge brightly through dark cover. Expectations of goodness and innocence early in life are endangered flora. Setbacks, easily leading to jaw-setting embitterment, can equally be steered into cultivating heart-courage. Schoolyard smirks, putdowns, and injurious bullying find their harvests in adult-sized sniping, pessimism, and injustice. With gained experience and years, countless jaded souls have crossed my path and offered me their wares. Many, from childhood to the present, are notably memorable: not just their voices, but the many varieties of what’s-the-use shrugging. Very early on, the I-don’t-cares and the so-whats ignited an inner wariness. I’ve found the same suspicion and repellent to be both necessary and applicable. Insensitivity corrupts the human spirit.

Is the state of being jaded inherent in the maturing process? Must weariness and dulling of spirit manifest as matters of course? Conversely, is idealism equivalent to immaturity? Venturing forth surely implies complex navigation through hostile territory. Holding one’s line against “invasions” to hopes and faith can self-negate. The collateral damage includes exhaustion and an odd sense of doubt as to the worth of vigilantly forging ahead. Believing the pilgrimage toward holiness is worthwhile is an ideal that resists erosive aspects that accumulate on a daily basis. During my packing up to leave home, at the age of 17, my mother gave me some drawing and painting materials to take with me to art college. She told me that it’s good to know how to compromise, but that I must never compromise my convictions. An ideal with which to be guided, both in general situations and through defeats. Knowing what to do with amassing disappointments means not allowing them to amount to disillusionment.

open questions : evolving answers

("don't look too good, nor talk too wise.")

“L’idéal, voilà l’échelle mysterieuse qui fait monter l’âme du fini, à l’infini” wrote French philosopher Victor Cousin, in “Du Vrai, du Beau, et du Bien.” This is to say, “The ideal is the mysterious ladder of ascent for the soul to advance from the finite to the infinite.” Without having an answer to the questions connecting maturity to cynicism, I will connect idealism with perseverance. Remembering my friends who live consecrated lives, I’ll add the questions about how daily life can remain always new to a soul. The vitality of pursuing holiness and generosity implies the pursuit of ideals, and I expect to continue on. But I also know the hazards of running contrary to the grain of rationalism. Yet another question regards purposefully being somewhat naïve to the wheel-and-deal world of “leveraging” every possible activity and interest into monetary units. Guarding and holding fast to ideals also means pursuing and upholding them, too. Lamps are meant to be held high, even while reckoning with expectations that force low ceilings. I insist upon expecting much, and impatiently so.

Finally, during a recent lunch hour in a public atrium, I overheard a man complain to his tablemates and say, “I guess you have the right to be miserable, when you get older.” Indeed, I added that declarative to my journal-writing. Well, he is quite correct in his claim to his civil right, but I’ll try not to connect the two aspects as intertwined inevitabilities. An idealist would not permit compounded disappointments to simmer the soul into a quiet acceptance of “the way things must be.” That would be too easy, and more days wouldn’t be needed to disprove such compromised convictions.

("hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says: ‘Hold on!’")

* James 1:27

gift words

“the word spoken by angels
was steadfast.”

~ Hebrews, chapter 2

Swirls of words swarm our days. Screens, phones, printed media, and spoken directives inform and distract. For the most part, the information is excessive, and the distractions tend to derail. Through barrages of verbiage and clichés, the mind is astonishingly able to extract key words. Amazingly, we are as capable of sifting and sorting, as we are prone to missing the point. Words formulate assemblages of letters and sounds that connect souls to concepts, and ignite our responses. Communicated and internalized words carry potential as pivot-points toward our gratitude as well as to our fears. Indeed, what is comprehended either in writing or by voice conveys a message. The words themselves are ethereal structures, yet they may have their own iconographic properties. What is the worth of a word, as a value denominator?

Rather than to look at the broader subject of words in general, my thoughts turn to the word as gift. Holy Scripture phrases universally encompassing magnitude as God speaks life into being. Before all things that live and generate, there shone the Word, the uncreated logos, all at once both ancient of days and ever new. From the panoramic expanse of creation to the humility of human hands, an affirmative word signifies action. Yet still, without physical dimensions, gratefully received words can be cherished as artifactual treasures. In a mystery that is uniquely human, this is possible. The spiritual gift of memory is able to retain more than words themselves, but their contexts, and the tones of the soothing spoken voices that first accompanied those words. With careful curatorial cultivation of the soul’s archives, our highly personal gift-words can be at the ready when we need them. Gift words represent needed strength to sustain the soul through dark times and to make strides in fair weather.

As it admittedly happens, during a rambling church service my attention turned to my palm-sized New Testament which I keep handy for such eventualities. The tiny book is filled with years of my own pencilled notations. Opening it to Hebrews, my favorite biblical section, the words faced up to me as the gifts they are. Each assuring word, and it happened to be the second chapter, reminded me of a weathered yet shining inheritance. Pearls of greatest price have landed in my hands as the brightest orange autumn leaves, wafting through open air to nestle precisely where I can receive them. Then I thought of the ways I restore documents and books, as a paper conservator preserving the written word. Even the bindings and flyleaves have histories to tell. Yet I returned again to the strength of spirit undergirding those tiny, thinly-printed words in my small book. There are many millions of these editions in the world, but this snowflake reached my hands as though authored and printed expressly for me.

For those of us who consider, construct, and comprehend with words, there is an added sensitivity to the verbal message. If we seek, we notice. What makes a word a gift, even something that points to the wellsprings of life? One aspect that comes to mind is that gift words are those pointed directly at me- fashioned especially for me, and spoken to my very condition. Another aspect is how my re-recital of these life-giving words effectively rekindles their intentions. But we sense far more than we can see, and I’ve come to believe that longings surface long after they have been rooted within. Part of this mystery is a longing for good words that reinforce, yet catch us by surprise. Words from our friends that know us best are often the messages that are most striking to our hearts.

The Spirit assures as well as alarms. Two personal examples which I never talk about have their places in this reflection. Very late one night, back when I was 18, I was interrupted from studying at my desk. I was living on a quiet street with large spaces between houses, and was very much awake while the rest of house was asleep. From outside my nearest window, I heard my name, called out several times in a brass-sharp tone. It sounded close to my windowsill. Of course, I went to the window to see who wanted me at that odd hour. Living on the ground floor, I ran quickly outside. Nobody was there. No footsteps, no vehicle, and not a subsequent sound. Just the night sky.

On another occasion, much later and in a very different place, there was a similar shock of an experience. Walking across a plaza in Boston, a section of pavement gave way underfoot and I fell through. I remember the pedestrian directly ahead of me was a blind man with a guide dog. It was an abrupt fall that I hadn’t a split-second to break, and the impact effectively shut out my lights. Long after the rescue, the bandaging, and the recovery, two aspects would not leave my thoughts: firstly, I wanted to know how long I had been unconscious, and secondly I wanted to make sense of something I “saw” during however long that span had been. I would return to the accident scene, bordered with yellow tape, and wonder about how long it took the medics to arrive. I had been reading Saint Augustine’s “City of God” on the subway, and I later had to clean my bloodstain off the cover. The book had been picked up and put on the stretcher with me. But I saw something, and I can describe it precisely. On a black background I saw two words, centered and all capitals in white: “IT’S YOURS.” It took a few years to comprehend something so unusual for so completely sober a person as myself. But the meaning came to me, and it remains to remind me that the life I have has been given to me. Though unknown and without influence or wealth, the gift of living can yet thrive. Several years ago, while running the footpath around Portland’s Back Cove, I looked to the sky above Casco Bay. The “It’s Yours” that had come to me became my “It’s Yours” that I suddenly understood to give back. Sprinting along the salt marshes, I said, “my life, God, it’s Yours- all of it.” The gift of “it’s yours” is to be given constantly.

What I "saw" when unconscious looked very much like this.

As much as words received can be traced back to their points of emanation, that which we internalize will draw us to our sources. Gift words do bring us to the sources of what strengthens us, and what gives each of us our own historic context. Consider how we find our ways through our days with symbols and words, noticing the nutrients as we seek them out. Indeed and realistically so, not every word and message will nourish. The gift words are the rarities that tend to be exceptions to the rules, yet surely not impossible or limited to few. Such words and sequences that enliven are discovered as they emerge. We notice as we seek, and we seek as we notice. Gift words, either spoken or in letter form, provide turns in the road that divert away from meditating upon miseries. Perhaps you, too, have your reference archive of gift words or even musical accompaniments, calling forth your truest self- that which is historic, evolving, and rooted.

songs in the night

“He said within himself-
Surely, if men be tried and troubled exceedingly,
it is because, while they think about their troubles and
distress themselves about their fears, they do not say,
‘Where is God my Maker, who giveth songs in the night?’”

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Songs in the Night

Winter winds have returned recollections to me that highlight reminders of many late nights ago. In the process of becoming a self-possessed high school student in the early 1980s, I developed a habit of staying awake late into the night. Being the only soul awake in the house, I’d perch at my desk with school art projects spread on the surface- with the radio nearby. The volume was kept low, out of respect, as well as to enjoy the quiet. Even New York City tones itself down very late at night. My tastes have always tended to times long preceding mine. History and depth were always understood to be intertwined. After all, une histoire means “a story,” too. Elder teachers, family members, and neighbors had the most captivating stories with matching dramatic recitative voices. Coming of age at a crossroads was somehow clear to me, and I would ponder this during my midnight musings, already longing for more warmblooded times. In the graininess of night, books, outer clothing, and satchel rested still as granite, but the radio was on. Before AM broadcasting became fully infested with political pugilists, much of the programming gave airspace to local commentators. New York’s abundant airwaves were resplendent with stories, reminiscences, and musings- in between round-the-clock news stations and music. Perhaps the older radio personalities also thought themselves at crossroads.

Listening to calming tones eases the environment and creates an oasis in time. Indeed, as sound is involved, spoken and musical content must soothe, lest the frequency be changed to another station. In my farthest memories- and there still exists some of this today- I’ve enjoyed live broadcasts during which the radio hosts reflect with anecdotes, or converse with guests, or place verbal interludes among music selections, or address the audience as a counterpart. “How in the world are you?” was how King’s College president Robert A. Cook would begin each of his radio offerings. The more interesting commentators display a signature style. Some have been able to make their commercials into entertaining extensions of their shows. Art Raymond, on WEVD, would advertise sponsoring eateries and tell the audience what to order at these businesses.

During dark and solitary hours, the earth and all its life forces continue unceasingly. I knew this from my window, at my desk, with the radio on. Such diversions are able to distract individuals away from making life’s boundaries into something as narrow as a table surface. My radio imaginings would include picturing the sources of the broadcasts. Studios are ensconced in large downtown office buildings, with announcers and technicians awake through the night hours. Some of them tell us how cold it is outside, and about traffic patterns on the roads and bridges. Through all the textbook diction, I could detect local accents. I remember how I could hear Richard Gladwell puffing on his pipe amidst gentle narratives within his classical music show. To this day, I often look at the radio while listening; perhaps many others do this, too. The gesture is similar to that of respectfully eyeing the person speaking to you.

This Philips radio from France has the perfect home in my apartment, with a slanted back
that exactly matches wall's angle.

Among our treasures we find our own iconography: gifts, heirlooms, and the finds that for us mean more than their surface appearances. Indeed, material is inherently temporal, but meaning is transcendently enduring. Only through personal experience can the iconographic aspects of places, things, sounds, and even thoughts be discovered and realized. It is for each of us to comprehend meaning and grasp that which is solid in our spirits. Radio is at least as endlessly fascinating to me as it is to see a photographic image manifest in a tray of developer. Even after all these years. There are technical and scientific explanations for these processes, yet the magic of retrieving sound signals from the air exceeds rationalization.

A radio’s purpose is to clearly receive a range of frequencies, and it must be tuned and positioned to make reception possible. And the goal of the radio’s purpose is for a person’s ability to listen. Radios have no memory. They do not store their commodities. Like cameras, they are instruments designed to register the moment. If such objects are considered in an iconographic context, we can ascribe our personal memories to these instruments. You may see a Realistic Chronomatic 9, but I always see the 15th birthday gift from my father. He offered to buy a television for me, but I said I’d rather have a radio. Over the years, I’ve added a few antiques, and find it remarkable how well they continue to work daily- thus defying the culture of manufactured obsolescence.

Providing company at work. The G.E. radio (top right),
a gift from my lifelong best friend, has accompanied me
through schools, studios, apartments, and many workplaces.

From my nighttime desk, the warmth of quiet music emanating from my radio aperch by the arching lamp, the new year stretches out before me. True to ascribed iconography, the small Grundig on my desk is understated yet far-reaching. It reflects this very instant, having neither past nor future. Yesterday’s news, scores, and statements are forgiven. Brightly through night hours, sounds of Mozart sweeten the horizonless abyss. Its life is a constant update; times and temperatures are always of the moment. The parable of the radio is one of receptivity and discernment, with static cleared away. Winter’s deeps remind us that above reportage and ads are angelic messengers bearing words of assurance. Mystery steeps our midst, and we’ve but to merely acquiesce.

A bright morning near the radio at The Palace Diner,
in Biddeford Maine.

nadolig llawen

"At His Word the worlds were framèd;
He commanded; it was done:
Heaven and earth and depths of ocean
in their threefold order one;
All that grows beneath the shining
Of the moon and burning sun,
evermore and evermore!"

~ Aurelius Prudentius, 5th Cen­tu­ry : Of the Father's Love Begotten (Corde na­tus ex pa­ren­tis)

ora et labora

“It is simply impossible that people should remain
unaffected by what they pass through.
Joys and sorrows, failures and successes,
pains and pleasures, disappointments and gratifications,
meetings and partings, experiences great and small,
insensibly do their part in making us interiorly what we are.”

~ Octavius Frothingham, The Hidden Life

collected wisdom of work life

A memory remaining with me from a teaching job past came to mind today. I had spent many hours of my own time helping the college chaplain complete his doctoral dissertation. He was a great friend, and that particular experience was intensely pressured, yet I was glad to have been able to give of my expertise. I had opened the library during a holiday just for us to print out his final four hundred page document. The chaplain looked exhausted and uncharacteristically unsure of himself. In the midst of those final editorial steps, I looked up and asked, “John, what makes us work so hard?” Without stopping to think, he bluntly replied, “Fear.” His response was entirely comprehensible to me, as it made sense to much of my own general experience. Admitting to being motivated by fear of failure exposes a side of life beneath standard office veneers.

Our lives at our various jobs reveal personal histories replete with scenarios, casts of characters, and moments of discovery. And stories. One of the factory jobs I’ve had was in a poultry processing plant. On the conveyor line, I heard the ex-cons’ adventures, the crazy guy that clucked like a chicken, and the lifers who had spent years and years slicing and packaging ad infinitum. I found the latter unimaginable. I once had a graveyard shift job, from 8pm to 8am, in a newspaper pressroom. My benchmates and I called 3am “the hour of delirium,” indicating the point at which our fatigue would take us through a dizziness before the human afterburners could take hold. During those times, we would laugh at our absurd hilarity. I had a bench-mate who would growl: “You know why I work here? I come here to burn off all my meanness!” His daytime hobby was to hike along railroad tracks and birdwatch.

During my years in commercial photography and industrial darkrooms, I worked with some eccentric and compelling souls, but unanimously and unfortunately under crude and exploitive management. Among the former were many artists, a hard-travelled rock band photographer, a dachshund breeder, an antiquarian auctioneer, and an Irish singer. The latter was a scourging succession comprising a relentlessly boorish ex-drill sergeant, a pilferer, and a rotation of aloof and abusive hard-drinkers. Adult schoolyard bullies. The one notable compliment, following years of consistent face-saving and time-defying achievement, was when I was referred to as “a vital cog in this machine.” Simply by proximity and some common goals, we learn about our co-workers’ lives, and care about them, too. Life is a very strange business that puts us shoulder to shoulder with individuals and settings we could not have imagined.

arenas and stages


I worked for more than 12 high-pressured years
in and around this tiny underground space.
The walls and ceilings were painted black,
to prevent any stray light reflections.

Work environments can be as enigmatic and fascinating as the cast of characters. Recalling the odors of loading docks, truck-fumed warehouses, store cellars, damp film-developing chambers, library attics, a cement storage area called “the dungeon,” a textile processing area called “the pit,” and the dry cold of a subterranean archive vault, my thoughts return to glimpse the words, pictures, and persistent forlorn aspirations of a songbird in a thornbush. Surely, from countless narrow hotplated coffeebreak rooms and cinderblocked crevasses, there dwell souls athirst for worlds of vast skies and lifegiving music. No less a personality than Saint Augustine, in the early 5th century, articulated creation’s basic desire to thrive. In his brilliant City of God, he observed how the simplest creatures such as worms and plants “show in every movement that they can make that they long to live and escape destruction.” Indeed, the hunger for more of life transcends temporal hardships:

“Merely to exist is, by the very nature of things, so pleasant that in itself it is enough to make even the wretched unwilling to die; for, even when they are conscious of the their misery, what they want to put an end to is not themselves but the misery.”

Remembering the family saying, le travail est de l’or (“work is as precious as gold”), I consciously cherish employment. Though a many-edged sword, I’m especially grateful for work as I dispatch my recurrent bills. But work is truly a treasured life element. Somehow, it is oddly natural and normal for all of us to grouse and grumble about our obligations. In the peculiar scheme of creation, humans are the ones that complain, satirize, and then set about to build the better mousetrap. Through history there are centuries of work songs, such as sea chanties, cloth-making chants, railroad and mine workers’ blues. As our days are spent at our jobs, under pressure to solve and produce, we are generally in our most lucid moments while at work. Alas, there are enough reminders to inform us to take those hours on duty with enhanced seriousness. The postmodern job demands gravitas, candor, and multitasking prowess with precision. All the while, as I’ve learned, all the workplace is a stage- and a thinking writer’s trove.

aspirations and perfectionism

The employment context is an arena through which we must make sense of our own times and the ways our work is valued. Though we develop marketable skills directed at leverage into sustaining income, there abides soul and conscience. Creative drive parallels paths of personal growth. While satisfying employers and fulfilling required tasks, the source of life from within hungers to transcend repetitive duties. Doing a good job is to excel in the present. Aspiring beyond cellars and conveyors is to aim at the future. Inherent in the progress of the soul is to aspire for better while living an ambition in the present. As the Holy Spirit’s action within effects the practice of faith, the hidden life of understated work is at the foundation of outward interaction with the whole of life.

An individual’s voyage through places of work navigates corporations, small businesses, varied definitions of profit, training sessions, and high-wire acts to prevent from being unemployed. Altruism is always hard to find, and it is for each of us to decide whether to make that an expectation. “Good business,” so we’re told, is when the worker’s productive worth exceeds how much they are paid. Yet, we take notice when there are news stories about “the best places to work,” marveling at morale-building perks and overtly informal atmospheres. Should work environments match life hopes, or is it sufficient to leave the job at work when signing out for the day?

My lengthening pilgrimage as a laborer began at 14, working in a grocery store in New York City. The store owner wore sunglasses all the time, and made me pay for an egg I had accidentally dropped. From there, I went on to a much larger store, delivering groceries to neighborhood customers. Since those high school years, surviving layoffs twice, each transition has been a reach for something better- and in Maine these have been very small steps. Embedded within the hidden life of an individual in a workplace are the often inexplicable dynamics of endurance and transition. My father always tells me that “you have to job-hunt throughout your career.” He reminds me to never expect sympathetic sentiments from an employer, while he always speaks of his own working experience with much sentimentality. “You will find,” he says, “that the higher up you advance, the less hard you’ll have to work.” I’m not so sure this is true for a postmodern. Or perhaps I’m not far “up” enough from hauling eggs and produce out of sidewalk bulkheads, or hauling cibachrome prints out of clenched darkrooms, and so on.

Considering the life pursuits of work and betterment causes me to revisit an old obstacle known as perfectionism. With a personal history tied to exclusion, and without privilege, a learned habit of trying to fit into situations by virtue of excelling had long ago ground a groove of perfectionism. Getting the job done rarely suffices, neither does getting more of the job done. Requirements broaden to increasing coverage, and getting it done continues to be insufficient. Such comprehension takes some getting used-to, as does some self-preserving degree of desensitizing. Yet simultaneously, the Spirit within prevents the soul afire from resorting to cynicism. Divine consolation and humility surely help to supply what is missing from thankless environs.

The old adage that “the pursuit of better is the enemy of good” meets its match in workplaces. Perfection in the fulfillment of all details, either outlined or assumed, leads to survival. Perfection, especially in a market replete with the unemployed and the underemployed, is requisite in order to be offered a position. Certainly, I am merely one among a great many of all of us, perplexed into the night hours by denials of opportunities for which experience squarely meets the need. Not perfect enough, evidently; or too young, too old, too local, too ethnic, too eclectic, too unknown, or just plain too plain. Whatever the reasons may be that keep each hopeful Moses out of the Canaans of their wishes, the ways of a surreal side of real life remind us of our coexistence with irony. Living in the minus side of perfect finds tremendous challenge amidst the ethos of unconditional love, justification by faith, and Christ’s acceptance of every embrace-returning soul into present and eternal belonging.

The first page of my first journal, writing about the instant the light is removed from the workspace,
and how I often worked with closed eyes.

During a lunch break, I decided to walk a wide circle around my general vicinity. From my musings, my attention turned to notice delivery, transportation, construction, and retail workers. Many of these dutiful souls struggle, too. Many of them also determine how to reckon with their days, and each of them have hopes- all with lives far too grand for the confining pages of curricula vitae.

redeeming the trials

In the fluidity of our times, we must by necessity maintain clear visibility. It is indeed as a lesson in spirituality to practice scrupulous diligence in the present, while preparing to ascend awaiting prospects. Arguably, there may not be a greater challenge than to bloom where one is planted. Even further, to thrive ungrudgingly. In such situations, history may assist. Remember how peace can be found in hostile circumstances, and how each of us have accomplished that in the past. When the Divine hand of providence cannot be felt, think of times of deliverance past from what seemed helplessly unendurable. When anxiously wondering when the road will turn, I must recall when it actually has done so before. At the same time, my memories invoke the names and words of admirable individuals from jobs past, lives witnessed that continue strengthening mine.

Inevitably, there remains a reckoning with the temporal aspects of our journeying. This is not to say there isn’t profound meaning in the strata of our hidden lives in the service of our work. Meaning is enhanced by learning, and more writing needs to be done from the context of work trenches; it can’t all be about corporate management. Consider how our words often come from our work, as do our existential conflicts. Our patchworked experiences are treasure-troves of situations and interactions from which to glean stories and perspectives. Enduring truths are surely found between clock punches. Anxiousness, alas, does not hasten prospects; each day has cares of its own, and that causes me to maintain the moment of the day. There’s work to be done; look at the time. From this hidden life come unifying and far reaching tests of faith and trust. In all settings and ages, patience must be continually learned, and forgiveness must be continually applied. Living is not confined to the marginal edges that trim the work day; the soul is alive throughout, wherever we have our being. As well, our efforts permit for us to live in solidarity with those around us: those we work for, work with, or work to serve. It is the hidden life of a grain of leaven, a mustard seed, a latent silver halide.

night invite