To carry inside you on a day of busy work

Look what I found in a book on shelf in a room lined with books and overlooking a lake.

From Thomas Merton’s

A Book of Hours:

"Keep your eyes clean and your ears quiet and your mind serene. Breathe God’s air.

Work, if you can, under His sky.

But if you have to live in a city and work among machines and ride in the subways and eat in a place where the radio makes you deaf with spurious news and where the food destroys your life and the sentiments of those around you poison your heart with boredom, do not be impatient, but accept it as the love of God and as a seed of solitude planted in your soul.

If you are appalled by those things, you will keep your appetite for the healing silence of recollection. But meanwhile—keep your sense of compassion for the men who have forgotten the very concept of solitude.

You, at least, know that it exists, and that it is the source of peace and joy

You can still hope for such joy. They do not even hope for it any more."

Ordinarily I’m not drawn to writings that posit work is best done in the outdoors, because for so many of us that is not an option. But I’ll forgive Merton his second sentence because he opens up so beautifully in the rest of this piece.

I love here that he suggests each of us, no matter the surroundings in which we work, can carry within a joyful seed of solitude, an appetite for reflective silence, and compassion for those with whom we work. This resonates with me and things I write about in Finding Livelihood. It also resonates with the writing of Josef Pieper, who figures into my book as well.

~~~

[Photo: Taken from a car window on an October road. Almost looks like something Monet might have stopped to paint.]

Get a sneak peek at a chapter from my new book

I’m quite elated to report that an essay from my upcoming book is now out in the current issue (summer/autumn 2014) of Harvard Divinity Bulletin. The Bulletin is a beautiful print quarterly journal, but all the contents are also online. So whether you have a subscription to the journal or not, you can read my essay "Two-Part Invention” here. And I do so hope you will.

The essay begins with the story of a cab driver who played a flute for me while we were stuck in a traffic jam and goes from there to outer space and places in between. There are more essays about vocation in this issue so click around within the issue and read the other offerings, particularly editor Wendy McDowell’s column.

The book, Finding Livelihood, is moving quickly through the editorial and production process. Kalos Press tells me a book design should be ready to look at by the end of this month. I’ll share something when I can.

If you want to take a look at the progress of the book manuscript over a number of years, take a look at this post: “What I’ve been working on.” Scroll down to see the index cards sorted out into piles. I’m not sure I’ll ever find a computer program or application to take the place of that process.

I would be honored if you checked out the essay. If you like it, please consider sending the link to someone else you know who might like it either for style or because it’s talking about things they care about: work and vocation; bridging sacred and secular; bearing witness; doxology.

On reading, Wright’s Surprised by Scripture

A friend at church, a philosophy professor at a nearby university, has gathered a group of women to read together through N. T. Wright's new release, Surprised By Scripture: Engaging Contemporary Issues. It's a book of essays that posits that assumptions about what the Bible does or does not say don't necessarily match the reality of what it actually does or does not say, particularly as related to contemporary issues.

The chapter we talked about last night was about faith and science and the widespread tendency to be unable to hold both in our brains at the same time. Blame it on Epicurus, the third-century BC Greek philosopher who spread the word that the gods, if they even existed, were so far removed from any earthly care or concern that we were essentially on our own. Blame it on the separation of church and state, which has shaped our way of thinking, here in the U.S. more so than in Europe, to such an extent that it seems impossible to imagine we’re part of a reality that includes it all, heaven and earth, in a dynamic, interactive, and mysterious present. Blame it on lots of things, but let’s do something about it.

The women in the room all read the chapter with an eye toward how it informs their lives and their work. Teachers thought about the classroom; parents thought about the raising of their children; those with a political spirit thought about voting decisions and acts of citizenry. I thought about my writing and how Wright’s words encourage me to keep writing in the vein of looking for signs of God's presence in the quotidian, of imagining layers of reality, of exploring the interplay of divine and human.

“Judaism and Christianity classically…celebrate and explore the mysterious interpenetration of heaven and earth," writes Wright. Each of us left with minds and hearts excited to further celebrate and explore that mystery.

~~~

[Photo: taken of Wright's book, conveniently placed next to stacks of a journal that speaks of mystery on a quarterly basis.]

Mosaic tiles and an exploration of work: what’s the connection?

I just sent in my revised post-copyediting book manuscript to the publisher. I’m grateful that Kalos Press is a publisher that still believes in partnering with the writer by having a copyeditor on the team. As in my day job with medical writing, I’m in awe of a copyeditor’s eagle eye for grammatical missteps and subtle syntax violations.

While rereading the manuscript a paragraph hopped out at me as one that might be fun to share here. it’s a paragraph about visiting a Barcelona landmark designed by Antonio Gaudi. Long-time readers of this blog may remember that I used to have a picture of Gaudi’s undulating mosaic bench at Parc Guëll, also in Barcelona, as the banner image. Something about his tiles and shapes really engages my imagination.

So here’s the paragraph:

There had been Casa Battló, a multi-story home, now museum, designed and refurbished between 1904 and 1906 by Modernista architect Antonio Gaudi, whose work is everywhere in Barcelona. Casa Battló’s arcs of natural wood and shades of blues, greens, and purples float you on imaginary water. Not a single straight line in the entire place, said the tour guide. The beauty of Gaudi’s signature mosaic tiles add into and become a whole so infinitely more beautiful than the sum of its parts that you’re left wondering whether to zoom in or out.

Reading that paragraph you may be wondering what place it has in a book exploring work and vocation. To that I’ll say, I hope it makes you curious enough to want to read more. That last sentence is certainly a clue about the book’s approach to the topic. 

Stay tuned, won't you?

~~~

[Photo: taken of planters on the wall of Casa Battló.]

On writing and distress from a story by Isak Dinesen

In a story by Isak Dinesen (“The Young Man with the Carnation”), a writer pleads with God through a night in a crisis of despair. In the morning God makes a covenant with the writer: 

“I will not measure you out any more distress than you need to write your books. Do you want any less than that?”

This is from a scene in a short story and not God speaking from within a canon of divinely-inspired scripture, so it's not theology, but it is literature and it has the ring of truth about it. Not in that sense of, "God will never give you more than you can handle." No, not that. But more along the lines of that you usually go through a few tough spots before you have something to give other people in the way of wisdom, encouragement, and insight. I think this is true whether you're a writer staring at a blank page or a friend sitting across the table from another friend.

I thought about this yesterday as I sent in a final manuscript for an anthology about pregnancy loss and infertility, which is being published by Kalos Press. My contribution to the anthology is a reprint of a short essay I wrote several years about my experience with pregnancy loss, which was first published at Harpur Palate. The publisher's goal for the anthology is to "assuage some of the sense of isolation. We want to offer a literary companion to others on the sometimes-lonely path that these issues require." It's a reality that you need to have traveled a road yourself before you can offer a certain kind of companionship to someone else on that same road.

In a way, the lines above from Dineson's story suggest a scary thought, because it is basically a guarantee that distress in one form or another is a pre-requisite to writing or being a person who longs for wisdom in any sense; but in another way, it is also an odd sort of promise of provision of raw material and brokenness as preparation for the tasks ahead. As much as anyone, I want and pray for burdens to drop away, but somehow out of acute and chronic burdens a tenderness and wisdom can grow that perhaps the kind of writing I want to do, or the person I want to be, just can't be without.

~~~

[Photo: taken of bench in the lobby of train station, Red Wing, Minnesota.]

Song for a workweek's end 2

It’s Friday again. Another long week perhaps? I seem to be on a music run and that's probably because the workweeks have indeed been long here lately. Try this song to close out the week, "The Once and Future Carpenter" by the Avett Brothers, from their album The Carpenter.

My son introduced me to the Avett Brothers about five years ago when he and his buddy played their album I and Love and You, including the title song with it’s line "Brooklyn Brooklyn Take Me Home," on repeat while painting rooms in our house to earn the money for their one-way plane tickets to NYC after college graduation. While the music played, I sat at my computer in the adjacent room, trying to work, trying to swallow down the lump in my throat. I like the Avett Brothers’ sound, and the thoughts and emotions in their songs, but they are always linked in my mind to those boys singing along on the threshold of adventure, that moment of leaving something behind and pursuing what’s next, of continuing to become who you’re going to become. This song speaks to that, to living the life you’re given.

The song’s refrain:

Forever I will move like the world that turns beneath me
And when I lose my direction I'll look up to the sky
And when the black cloak drags upon the ground
I'll be ready to surrender, and remember
Well we're all in this together
If I live the life I'm given, I won’t be scared to die

Click here to read an interview with the Avett Brothers from Entertainment Weekly about their album The Carpenter.

Enjoy!

~~~

Thinking about cities thanks to Comment magazine

Cities have been on my mind lately, partly because we just helped my son and daughter-in-law move from one city to another. From Chicago here, to Minneapolis. I have a long history with both these cities. I went to college in Chicago and have loved it ever since. I have family and friends there and so have visited often over the years, particularly after my son also went to college there and then planted roots and stayed. As for Minneapolis, I’ve lived here, in the city limits, nearly all of my adult life. My other son went to school in Boston, but he now lives in New York City and has been our guide and teacher for understanding that overwhelming but glorious place. My husband is a student of skyscrapers and other city architecture. You could say we’re a city-type family.

The summer issue of Comment magazine is focused on cities (“The Other Side of the City”), and I’ve been reading it with interest. The essays in this issue are challenging my thinking about cities. Despite my confidence in getting on a subway or finding a restaurant, how much do I really know about the inner workings or social architecture of the cities I love? Coincidentally, the issue’s first page is Carl Sandburg’s poem, "Chicago."

Editor James K. A. Smith writes in the title essay,

"[T]his issue also invites you to consider the unseen side of the city, the social infrastructure that undergirds it—the web of institutions and systems that make it possible, like the hidden girders and encased skeletons that hold up our skyscrapers. The city isn't just a mission field, a dense audience for Gospel proclamation; it is also a human cultural creation, born of necessity and desire, a way that humans seek to live together. But such a reality is not magic, nor is it merely "natural;" it is an astounding cultural feat that requires constant maintenance, renewal, and reform, especially in a fallen world. Infrastructure isn't sexy and doesn't get much press. Nobody moves to the city for the sewers, sanitation, or the municipal master plan. And yet these invisible skeletons of the city are what sustain its life."

You can read the complete essay here as well as an essay by Milton Friesen, “The City is Complex: Lessons from The Wire.” The rest of the issue is accessible only by print or digital subscription, which I recommend by the way. Comment is a quarterly magazine (tagline: “public theology for the common good”) and is always filled with themed and thought-provoking material.

What cities have you known and loved?

~~~

[Photo: Taken approaching Chicago's Gold Coast, southbound on Lakeshore Drive.]