Fred Rogers and Repairing Creation

A little over a week ago I watched the new documentary about Fred Rogers, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? Have you seen it? I have fond memories of my sons calmly and happily watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on television when they were little, and while I have always been grateful for Fred Rogers, I was ever more so after watching the documentary.

I’ve been thinking since about how Fred Rogers became who he was and what he has to say to us, even us grown-ups, about who we become. From all that was shared in the documentary, two things, in particular, stand out.

The first is that he was a minister with a degree from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He worked in television before going to seminary and after he graduated from seminary. He knew that being a minister was not limited to standing behind a pulpit, as valuable as that definition of minister is. A man or woman who has prepared to serve God, or intends to serve God whether or not a degree is behind that intention, can do so in a multitude of ways.

The second is what he had to say to all of us, even and especially us grown-ups, about what we do with our lives. In a special television appearance after 9/11, he challenged his listeners to be about something big:

“No matter what our particular job, especially in our world today, we all are called to be tikkun olam, repairers of creation. Thank you for whatever you do, wherever you are, to bring joy and life and hope and faith and pardon and love to your neighbor and to yourself.”

Read that phrase again: Repairers of creation.

Today with the strong, and sometimes misguided, emphasis on finding one’s unique vocation or “call” and following only that perceived path, this reminder that each of us is to be about the mending of creation by bringing joy, life, hope, faith, pardon, and love to the world around us no matter our job—in any job, in every job—is so needed.

If you haven’t seen the documentary, maybe you can still catch it in a theater. If not, for about the cost of a hamburger or large latte you can watch it on iTunes or another online service. I do hope you will.

~~~

[photo: taken on a recent autumn walk]

Mary Oliver's Song of the Builders

While on vacation a couple weeks ago and sitting outside a coffee shop on the two-lane highway that runs from Duluth up to Canada, I noticed a free library box off to my right. Inside were a couple of good finds, including a book of Mary Oliver poems, New and Selected Poems, Volume 2. In my book bag in the car I already had a couple volumes of Oliver's essays, which I'd taken along to reread, but I didn't own this book of poetry so added it to my stack of books for the road.

Inside I found this poem, "Song of the Builders." I love its take on work: humility, effort, and hope all merging together to rebuild the universe. Read it and see what you think.

~~~

[Photo: taken of a humble and hopeful daisy.]

On tending: thoughts on a used book

One of the books that I bought when a friend gave me a gift card to Half-Price Books several months ago was French Dirt: The Story of A Garden in the South of France by Richard Goodman. (I wrote about it in my newsletter last week and am writing of it here as well, adding some new thoughts.) Since I'm not a gardener, I'm not exactly sure why I put this book in my stack, but I know its cover art along with the suggestion of a creative endeavor in France held substantial appeal. A first-time gardener, plus being from New York City, Goodman had many questions about how to begin. One of the things he quickly learned was that he must "tend" his garden every day. Tend: isn't that a great word? It means "to have the care of; watch over; look after." Reading French Dirt made me think not only about how much I'd love to travel to the South of France but also about my writing and how long I sometimes go without tending it. Perhaps you have something to tend as well, something that's not your paid work but work of another variety, even work of the leisurely variety. (As his book affirms, there's sometimes a thin line between work and leisure). What a gift it is when someone shares the way in which they tend what is theirs to tend.

And speaking of someone sharing their way, another thing that interested me in reading this book is that although it looked brand new, there were three papers stuck in the pages, which I hadn't noticed until I started reading. First, there was a receipt for the book, dated New Year's Eve of 2010, from Haslam's book store in St. Petersburg, Florida, my old home town! An independently owned bookstore, Haslam's is now more than 80 years old. Next, there was a short page of four notations from the book. Among them the reader had noted a gorgeous piece of writing on page 26, in which Goodman wrote about watering the garden by moonlight, a section I had just read and delighted in before discovering this paper, and a word on page 82 that I also had paused over, estival, a new word to me but one that is most appropriate right now because it means " pertaining or appropriate to summer." Finally, there was an article from The New York Times, dated August 28, 2011, about Richard Goodman riding his bicycle nearly daily from his home on the Upper West Side down to ground zero, or as close as he could get, for three months after 9/11 ("Coping With 9/11, Riding on Two Wheels") and then writing about it in a limited-press book called The Bicycle Diaries: One New Yorker's Journey Through 9/11, which he did in partnership with the book's illustrator, Gaylord Schanilec.

I like to think the book's previous reader intentionally left these papers stuck in the pages for the benefit of its next reader. A camaraderie of sorts. A mystical tending of the community of readers.

~~~

[Photo: taken of the cover of French Dirt.]

Patricia Hampl's new book on leisure

Two friends recently gave me a copy of Patricia Hampl's new book, The Art of the Wasted Day. It's a memoir about Hampl's lifetime desire for leisure, meaning not passive entertainment but rather "the life of the mind." (Hampl's book A Romantic Education, first published in 1981, is considered the start of the modern memoir.) A couple weeks ago the three of us had intended to go together to hear her read and speak at Macalester College in St. Paul, the city where she's from and about which she has often lovingly written, but I had to back out because of an evening work conference call. It seemed ironic to pull out of a reading about leisure due to work, particularly because the last book I wrote had explored the conflict between leisure and work. My friends went, however, and gifted me with the book. 

Hampl posits an interesting question: Does leisure suggest a life in which you stay put, "lie low," or one in which you "journey"? It's an interesting question and she structures her book along these lines in three sections: Timelessness, To Go, and To Stay. I am still reading it but wanted to already share a section:

“But if leisure (the leisure that promotes the life of the mind) is what’s missing from our overamped world, if the rich multi-tasked life is the problem, shouldn’t a person stay put, lie low? .... This is the dilemma, my dilemma, maybe an essential contemporary middle-class dilemma: To stay? Or to go? Be Pascal? Or be Chaucer? ....

If you’re a “seeker” (and who, opening a book, is not?), isn’t the open road the only way, paradoxically, to find the lost life of daydream where all the rest–wisdom, decency, generosity, compassion, joy, and plain honesty–are sequestered?

If life is a journey, has it just become a getaway to somewhere warm on JetBlue?”

I'm sure I'll post more about this book when I've finished.

~~~

ps. I've written a couple other posts about Patricia Hampl: click here to find.

[Photo: taken of emerging fiddlehead ferns.]

More books about work: The Breadwinner and Nomadland

If you've read my book Finding Livelihood, you'll know that one of the things I explore and challenge is that common claim that a person should only do work about which he or she is passionate. Recently I read two books that exemplify this.

The first is The Breadwinner, a short novel, written by Deborah Ellis and published in 2000. I found out about it because it's recently been made into a beautiful animated film, newly released on Netflix. It's about an 11-year-old girl who must suddenly support her family in Kabul, Afghanistan after her father is imprisoned. Highly recommended!

The second is Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder. Nomadland is about men and women who have chosen to live on the road in vans and trailers, often as the alternative to being homeless. The people Bruder gets to know in writing this book have been working hard but the bottom fell out. A divorce, an illness, a bad mortgage, the 2008 recession. Part exciting adventure story, part frightening social analysis. I don't think I'll ever place an order from Amazon without thinking of the people in this book. Again, highly recommended!

Spotify list: hope

I've started a Spotify list of songs that speak of or bring to mind some element of hope, the subject of my current book-in-progress. With the exception of one (Spem in Alium), they're songs of the more contemporary variety. Right now the list has only 15 songs but it's still growing. Take a listen and follow it if you'd like. If you have a song to suggest, please send me a note. Here's the link.

And here's another Spotify playlist I put together a couple years ago when Finding Livelihood came out. The songs speak in some way to work and leisure. Please, enjoy.

The vocational twist in "It's A Wonderful Life"

Just before Christmas this year I watched, yet again, It's a Wonderful Life starring Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. It hit me more than ever how George Bailey had longed for and aimed to achieve a certain kind of life and career but ended up, through a series of circumstances largely outside of his control, working at the one job he had most hoped to avoid. It was by being in this position, however, that he was able to provide for and save from ruin many of the people in his town. They then did the same for him at his time of need. Watch it again for that vocational twist. What might have become of Bedford Falls—and of George—had George insisted that the only way his life would have meaning would be by following his dreams?