The last two and half days I have been on retreat at St. John’s Abbey on the plains of Minnesota. This amazing campus of both a university and preparatory school is also the home to a Benedictine community of priests and monks. As the community offers hospitality,the buildings themselves are havens of sanctuary and art. It is the community who gave birth to what is known as The St. John’s Bible, a magnificent original, illuminated manuscript of the scriptures. Each page is handwritten in calligraphy that is distinctive to this particular book. I was with a group of fellow clergy who were given a wonderful introduction of the process of its creation which ended in seeing an exhibit of many of the pages. It was a glorious experience.
Our guide was a young woman who is a student at the neighboring College of St. Benedict. Later in the day we all remarked at how we had been caught up in her enthusiasm and love for this project, for these pages of ancient text illustrated with images portraying both traditional and sometimes quite unlikely pictures. We were all inspired by her mastery of the story of one man’s childhood dream of writing out the entire Bible one day. Donald Jackson, the Welshman who had this ambition, completed his dream with the Book of Revelation this past year. He had collected a team of other calligraphers and artists with various specialties and also a team of theologians who read the texts and made collective decisions on the final illuminations. While the dream had been his, he knew he needed many people to help take the project to its completion.
As I walked through the exhibit and allowed the images to wash over me, I was filled with such awe. When I walked closer and examined the precision of calligraphy and tiny details of ink and art woven throughout, it took my breath away. I tried to imagine what it was like in the studios of these individual artists as they painstakingly worked day after day on this immense undertaking. I wondered what it was like to have such gifts, to be able to give yourself over every day to creating such beauty.
One particular fact about the project that was so inspiring to me was how the artists, under Jackson’s direction, worked with the mistakes they made. They were, after all, humans who make mistakes! Instead of starting over on a page or throwing it away completely, they added little drawings in the margins that actually draw attention to the mistake. These expensive velum pages are adorned with butterflies or other insects holding a line of ink like a fishing line or other implement that inserts the forgotten or misspelled word or phrase. It made me smile and offered a lesson to us all about allowing our mistakes to become a visible part of our fabric.
Seeing this work made me think of all the artists I am blessed to know who spend their days painting, acting, writing, making music. Each day they get up and go about creating something that has never been before or practicing and reciting words or music that has been done countless times, giving it their own spin. While it is often not an easy life, or a particularly lucrative one, it is what they were called to do, gifted to do: Bring beauty to the world. Connect people with emotions that have been dormant. Tell stories that remind us who we are and why we are here. This is the work of the artists among us.
Each of us in an artist in our own right, if we choose to see it that way. Perhaps we don’t have the gifts or skills to illuminate a manuscript or write a sonnet. But if we choose to see the lasting impact we make in whatever work we do, we can do this work with the love and intention of an artist. The table we set or the soup we make can be a work of art we offer to family and friends. The way we answer the phone or greet those we meet can be poetry if spoken with presence and compassion. The floors we sweep, the beds we make, the dishes we wash can all be art if they are acts of love.
What art are you offering to the world this day? The world needs your particular gifts. I am sure of it. In their perfection and with their mistakes.
