Why a “Scribe’s” Journal?
(Note: there is also a part two to this, here)
It’s funny...ever notice how each person has things they gravitate towards to center themselves? My fiancé for example often repairs vintage fishing gear when he needs to center, and it well suits his wonderful rescuing nature, he reminds me that Jesus too was a fisherman. On my end, When i’m off kilter and need some calm i often will find myself poring over Medieval manuscripts and Books of Hours. Something about that touches me , every single time. Its that life behind it, the life of a scribe.
Some may laugh, but i seriously fantasize about such a life and it calms me, a life of copying holy books, of praying while the words are copied so slowly and carefully, of embellishing the borders, of carrying forward truth and beauty like that. For a scribe does not create so much as carry forward. It’s the same with an icon maker as well, it is said one ~writes~ an icon, like a scribe copying a sacred manuscript only in image form. East or west, manuscript or icon, its about being a scribe.
A scribe is not an artist as the word defines an artist. A scribe doesn’t even sign his name to the finished "piece", for he was carrying forward, not personally creating. A scribe is not blown by the whims of the muse either or even by the whims of the heart. He does not need to be "unique" and stand out, simply obedient. He does not need to be inspired, simply prayerful. He does not need a fancy environment, he does not need riches, he just needs peace and quiet and simplicity for an uncluttered mind and heart. And if the ego starts to loom over things, or if he becomes stressed and is no longer prayerful, tradition tells him he is to stop...and return to a prayerful place before continuing his "writing".
Now to me this sounds like heaven quite honestly, it sounds like a path to calm and joy, an anchor in the storm. A "rule" that one's priority is to remain prayerful and to carry forward beauty somehow.... rather than that horrible pressure to be "special" and unique and stand out and create something new . A "rule" that it’s more important to quietly carry forward calm and beauty than it is to stand out or "succeed". Simply carrying forward, simply beautifying to em-bell-ish. I think when we em-bell-ish its like polishing, like the life enhancing care of polishing wood, but with em-bell-ish-ment it’s deepened, taken to a whole other level, to a place of "ornamentalness". Funny how we discount ornamentalness. It reminds me of the angel in the home, how she is often criticized for being "merely ornamental" But in this she reflects humanity's soul in a sense....for that’s what we are when it comes down to it isn’t it, ornamental? We are not the Creators but the embellishers, at least that’s what it seems to me. But it can still be a beautiful thing.
When i started this whole blog journey here it was spurred by this dream about the bluebird of happiness upon my grandmother’s kitchen windowsill. That dream will be cherished forever, and so will this continuing journey of keeping at home i suspect. But there is another layer just as strong, that of “em-bell-ish-ment”, spurred on by this recent dream (i still need to record this one, will soon). I don’t really know what it means yet. Only that it has to do with this “scribe-ness”. Perhaps that is what might call the bluebird of happiness to my own kitchen window, who knows. All i know is i am so irresistibly drawn.
I also keep getting drawn to this passage from Emily of New Moon (in book two Emily Climbs):
““ ‘ lo, the winter is past: the rain is over and gone: the flowers appear on the earth: the time of the singing of birds has come’...
Sometimes I think it really isn’t worth while to try to write anything when everything is already so well expressed in the Bible. That verse I’ve just quoted for instance—it makes me feel like a pigmy in the presence of a giant. Only twelve simple words–yet a dozen pages couldn’t have better expressed the feeling one has in spring.”
And its true i think. That there is no need for our personal creations in the end, including our own words. For what can we say better? BUT.... there is a deep need for our carrying forward, and also for our loving what we carry forward by beatifying/adorning somehow. If we are given a sturdy house (and we are, by Our Father), we don’t need to rebuild it. But i feel we DO show our love and care of it by living it, and we live it beautifully by adorning it, by lovingly polishing and beautifying and em-bell-ish-ing it, by caring for it, and passing it forward. Our Blessed Mother is surely very much our teacher there too, she who treasured things in her heart until they became em-bell-ish-ed with the deepest of grace.
Em-bell-ish-ment. Scribe-ness. I know it may all sound cerebral but odd for practical day to day life. But for over a year now there’s been this phrase in the back of my heart, the phrase "an iconic rule of life"(from back here, and also from doing visio divina with the "fairy icon"). An "iconic rule of life", meaning, what if one's rule of life (way of actual living life’s daily rhythms) were based on the principles of icon/manuscript making....a life more like the life of a scribe? This image has not let go.
At the same time, I’ve been struggling with something seemingly different...the Christian call to servanthood. Too big a struggle to detail here, but trust me this struggle's been/is a doozy. Recently though something happened, around the beginning of the new year. I was reading up on how manuscripts were literally created, mega fascinating. One article was going into detail about the process and then bam, it froze me in my tracks....for it compared the life of a scribe with that of a servant. In none too amused terms either, its author kind of shook his head and moaned his view here, that the scribes were the medieval version of sweatshop workers he felt, overused undercompensated labor, breaking their backs stooped over their little desks writing in poor rooms with even poorer light, the dreariness of it.
A scribe.....a servant? The serenity i long for there....dreary? This thing i find myself gravitating like a magnet towards when i need calming, this thing i bleeping fantasize about, this thing i even long to base my concrete day to day "rule of life" on somehow....this life of scribe is seen as a dreary servant? Something about that kind of shook me up. I guess one person's healing is another person's idea of horror. And it later made me realize that the ~kind~ of servanthood Christ gives us is PERSONAL. Tailored to each heart. And that's why its not usually some sort of horrible gut wrenching sacrifice on our part when it comes down to it but rather a GIFT underneath. A SERIOUS gift! It feels like we are asked to be servants in the places that will heal us the most, were that deep relentless draw is that He put in our hearts (and part of that place for me happens to be as a "scribe" it seems).
The thing is, in Scripture the servanthood we are called to is that of a bond-servant, those who may start off as a forced servant, and it may not be an easy life, but still something clicks and the servant realizes this is actually the place they are meant to be and they ~choose~ to stay....they know, difficulties though there may be, that this place is their true longing deep down, the deeper desire. They then become a bondservant, devoted for always, and adopted under the permanent care of their Master. Their serving feels now more that of a son of a daughter (to me it does anyway), that they are no longer merely a guest but are finally "at home". A servant is a guest and feels it, but a bondservant is adopted when it comes down to it aren't they? The difference there is night and day. The difference is be-long-ing. To quote Emily again (from book three, now how can i resist?):
““There was a sense of harmony in the house. The things in it did not have to become acquainted but were good friends from the very start They did not shriek at each other. There was not a noisy room in the house. ...
“Oh isn’t it nice to feel that a place belongs to you?” (said Dean)
“It’s nicer to feel that you belong to a place,’ said Emily, looking around her affectionately.” A Christian’s serving it seems is not meant to be the grief of a slave who never feels at home, but the hidden gift of the be-long-ing of a bond servant...despite how it may look to others. A bond servant is exactly who you want to be when the dark night of the soul hits too, when all you can do is obey, when the heart is dry and uninspired...and it sure does happen. But i think when you are in your right place it just doesn’t matter , because you’re home .....and just doing your little duties, just obeying.... is enough. You don’t have to be “inspired” and “‘spontaneous” all the time....just being a bond servant is enough. I find that words can't express the comfort there, or say just how much i have needed that. REALLY needed that.
So something about this has just caught my heart my lately. Won’t let go. That our servanthood is so interwined with our deepest longing and our "home-ness". And in my case it seems it involves this "life of a scribe"-ness somehow. I don't know why i detail this here. Perhaps just because i need this focus so much so i need to “put” it somewhere. And i don't know how to actually embrace this "life of a scribe" either. Can one clean house like a scribe maybe, bake bread like a scribe, by letting your motions be a "writing"', a carrying forward and a beautifying somehow? It'll just have to unfold over time i guess. But it still really helps to write about this "scribe-ness" here anyway. I just really long to live like a scribe somehow, to unwrap this gift of “bond-servant”-ness in my life. Makes me feel like a kid on Christmas. So i just can’t resist ending with yet another Emily of New Moon quote (hey, we all need a heroine, smile). Again from the third book in the series:
“This has been a lyric spring day–and a miracle has happened. It happened at dawn–when I was leaning out of my window, listening to a little, whispering, tricksy wind o’ morning blowing out of Lofty John’s bush. Suddenly–the flash came—again–after these long months of absence–my old, in expressible glimpse of eternity. And all at once I knew I could write. I rushed to my desk and seized my pen. All the hours of early morning I wrote; and when I heard Cousin Jimmy going downstairs I flung down my pen and bowed my head over my desk in utter thankfulness that I could work again.
“Get leave you to work–
In this world ‘tis the best you get at all,
For God in cursing gives us better gifts
Than men in benediction.’
So wrote Elizabeth Barret Browning–and truly. It is hard to understand why work must be called a curse–until one remembers what bitterness forced or uncongenial labour is. But the work for which we are fitted–which we feel we are sent into the world to do–what a blessing it is and what fulness of joy it holds. I felt this to-day as the old fever burned in my finger-tips and my pen once more seemed a friend.
‘Leave to work’—one would think any one could obtain so much. But sometimes anguish and heartbreak forbid us the leave. And then we realise that we have lost and know that it is better to be cursed by God than forgotten by Him. If He had punished Adam and Eve by sending them out to idleness, indeed they would have been outcast and accursed. Not all the dreams of Eden ‘whence the four great rivers flow’ could have been a s sweet as those I am dreaming to-night, because the power to work has come back to me.
‘Oh God, as long as I live give me le’leave to work’, Thus pray I. Leave and Courage.
(image by William Whitaker, from here)
