book tour, BlueBeary and baskets

I have just come off a magical weekend with a dear friend and am launching full force into a busy week of touring with Martha Morgan and finishing the BlueBeary book. Thank God for cell phones and laptops and wireless internet. Last night I read (aloud to a friend), Wendell Berry’s essay “Why I’m not going to buy a computer” (summary here). Thought provoking and sobering, to be sure, but I am going to remain grateful for my computer and the internet, all the while mindful that the power grid and the information superhighway will fail sooner or later (going the way of the Roman roads). Meantime, I will use them to their fullest advantage.

It’s interesting to think of the significance of one’s work, especially for the artisan. The friend I was with on the weekend is a construction manager by trade and has a natural fascination with building structures. It was delightful to watch him assess the foundation of the United old church that’s across our back yard: posts, beams, joists, and other things that are new vocabulary for me but clearly important to understand if one wants a secure building. Apparently this little church is missing a main supporting post. Someone had better fix it before we host many more arts gatherings! Anyhow, my point is that Kevin’s work is obviously useful. What about work that simply adds beauty and has no apparent “usefulness”?

Three times in the past year we hosted my friend Andria (pictured in this post) for creative retreats. She wanted to try carving clay, so Jeffrey prepared some extrusions for her (square, hollow lengths of clay). They come out looking elemental, like wind, fire, water … and Spirit. The pieces from the first retreat turned out beautifully through drying, bisque firing, glazing and final firing. The second round of carvings were even more beautiful than the first … but there was something wrong inside the clay and they literally blew up inside the kiln during bisque firing. Andria tried to take a philosophical approach to the disappointment, but really needed the emotional approach of grieving.

Tentative about trivializing her loss, I shared a story with her from the first chapter of Acedia and Me by Kathleen Norris. Fortunately, the story resonated with Andria and helped her to understand her work as an act of worship, whether or not the "product" of that worship is preserved. Interestingly, Abba Pauls work was practical--basket weaving--yet his treatment of it was decidedly not. Here's the story:

One of the best stories I know is found in The Institutes by John Cassian, a monk who was born in the fourth century. Cassian speaks of Abba Paul, who, like many desert monks, wove baskets as he prayed, and subsisted on food from his garden and a few date palms. Unlike monks who lived closer to cities and could sell their baskets there, Paul

could not do any other work to support himself because his dwelling was separated from towns and from habitable land by a seven days’ journey through the desert … and transportation coast more than he could get for the work that he did. He used to collect palm fronds and always exact a day’s labor from himself just as if this were his means of support. And when his cave was filled with a whole year’s work, he would burn up what he had so carefully toiled over each year.

Does Abba Paul epitomize the dutiful monk who recognizes that the prayers he recites during his labors are of more value than anything he can make? Or is he the patron saint of performance art, methodically destroying the baskets he has woven to demonstrate that the process of making them is more important than the product? Paul’s daily labors may have been designed to foster humility, but the annual burning had another, greater purpose. Cassian notes that it aided the monk in “purging his heart, firming his thoughts, persevering in his cell, and conquering and driving out acedia.”

So I continue to use my computer and drive my car and publish books, believing that these things contribute to a greater purpose, mindful that the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.