SWEET HOUR OF…TIME
“The one who would know the scriptures must have much leisure.”¹
A friend and I have a congenial on-again off-again debate over the question of why some people enter the laboring trades while others (as a matter of vocation) pursue what is sometimes called “the life of the mind” — of philosophy, literature, art, and related pursuits. For neither of us is this a question of anyone’s basic intelligence,² but my friend thinks it is primarily a matter of interest and aptitude — that the guy working up on the scaffold (for example) is unlikely to produce poetry or philosophy because he simply doesn’t have any interest in it. My thought, conversely, is that, historically at least, it has more to do with time and opportunity — that is to say that those who work in the various fields of “labor” have just as much intellectual potential (and potential interest) to produce a great poem, philosophical system, or work of art as anyone else — it’s just that, at the end of a day — and over the course of a lifetime — they’re too tired. (Lest I sound like I’m pronouncing from on high — I am very much from a line of laborers and workers — not that I have many useable skills myself.)
Our debate is essentially a glorified college bull session, and we are probably both right, but here I will carelessly leave my friend’s side of the argument behind as I make my case:
A survey of the history of literature and the arts demonstrates that the great works have been produced — to a disproportionate degree — by a) those wealthy enough to be free of the need to work, and b) those who accepted poverty in pursuit of their art. (A variation on these categories is the artist of modest means who is supported by the commission or patronage of the wealthy.) In each case, the result was, to put it simply, that they had time to read, write, compose, paint. This leaves the working man who, accidentally or on purpose, had committed himself to supplying his family with food and shelter by the only means at his disposal — his physical labor — and thus had to work so many hours in a day that he probably invented the phrase, “he was asleep before his head hit the pillow,” but was too tired to write it down. If he wasn’t poor, he would have been if he bought pen and ink and took time to cast his thoughts and dreams onto paper.
It goes without saying that there have always been exceptions, but this is the way it was, and is, in much of the world. Its persistence down through the generations is the main theme of Thomas Gray’s, “Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” written in 1768.
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway’d,
or waked to ecstasy the living lyre:
But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
rich with the spoils of time, did ne’er unroll;
Chill Penury repress’d their noble rage,
and froze the genial current of the soul.
There are two other categories for placement in this speculative scheme: The “gentleman farmer” and the clergyman.³ The gentleman farmer is a man of the soil and of the mind — he goes off to be educated and comes back to work the land (in the case of a “gentleman,” most likely land that he owns); he understands the organic connection between hand-smarts and head-smarts. Some of my best friends are gentlemen and gentlewomen farmers, a title that sounds a bit archaic but still rings true in practical terms.
And clergymen? I sometimes envy the Victorian stereotype of the rector as a “kept man,” pottering in his study, breaking for tea, then attending the parish flower show up at the manor-house. (This is an exaggeration of the Church of England’s “freehold” system, in which the vicar essentially had ownership rights to his parish, and was, in a way, “lord of all he surveyed.”) I have to say that the modern pastor’s job description is more like “the man who mounted his horse and rode off in all directions.” Yet I do not want to be disingenuous about (or give up on) the built-in need in this calling for what the Anglican Church refers to as “reflective ministry,” and what the Book of Sirach calls, simply, “leisure.” Time, that is, to study, read, and write. (See title line, above.)
We are discovering that, in a humane society, all occupations and professions ought to offer a measure of flexibility in the work schedule. (It was, after all, Dickens’ pre-conversion Scrooge who told Bob Cratchitt, “Be here all the earlier next morning!”) The recent pandemic caused a necessary flexibility in nearly all lines of work — a transformation that is continuing to have an effect in the workplace, school, and home— and studies show that employee flex-time even helps the bottom line. So rather than succumbing to the lure of workaholism (an illness), the pastor can model a healthy balance in his or her own life, and support such balance in the lives of members of the parish and the community. Gold, perhaps, has been the most pursued; but time the most valued resource after all.
My seminary president advised graduating seniors heading into their first parishes that, if we had any workmanlike skills, “don’t let anybody know about it.”⁴ And he suggested that we refer to our “study” rather than our “office” — an idea that sounded rather pretentious at first, but now comes quite naturally to me.
John Donne, who delivered powerful sermons from the pulpit of St. Paul’s in London from 1621 till his death in 1631, also wrote volume after volume of religious (and love!) poetry during those years — poetry that still speaks to us. R.S. Thomas, who died in 2000 after forty years as a rural vicar in the Church of Wales and who wrote thirty books of Nobel-nominated poetry, said frankly, after he retired, that it was the “Anglican freehold” that allowed him time to write. I have no doubt that — in the Rev. Donne’s townhouse and Father Thomas’ country parsonage — the “reflective hours” allowed by the freehold nourished a caring ministry along with some of the poetry of the ages. History is grateful to their parishioners for granting them the time.
A HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER
~John Donne (The poem is a play on his name.)
Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallow’d in, a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And, having done that, thou hast done;
I fear no more.
THE BRIGHT FIELD
~R.S. Thomas
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receeding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
NOTES:
1. Sirach 38:24
2. In his book, Shop Class as Soul Craft (highly recommended), Matthew Crawford quotes the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras: “It is with his hands that man is the most intelligent of beings.”
3. Because most of the examples are set in history, references to various occupations in this essay are in the male gender of the time. (I’m glad the times they are a-changing.)
4. With apologies to my seminary president, some of the most effective clergy I know are good pastors because they are as at home in the workshop as in the pulpit.
