Craftsmanship

I've always thought the monastic lifestyle sounded stunningly, well, fun.  Monastics commonly pray the liturgy of the hours throughout the day, and during the in between time, well .... they do crafts.

How jolly does this dude look with his hand-crafted cheese?

One of my favorite pieces of writing is Pope John Paul II's "Letter to Artists."  I often think of it, along with David Foster Wallace's "This is Water", as my personal manifesto (more on DFW later).

Craftsmanship and artistic creativity are important---essential---because it is in craftsmanship and artistic creativity that humans draw more fully into the image of God, participating in the act from whence comes the term Creator.  

There's nothing mainstream about #HipsterJPII*

To those who have honed their artistic skills, JPII writes: 

"None can sense more deeply than you, artists, ingenious creators of beauty that you are, something of the pathos with which God at the dawn of creation looked upon the work of his hands.  A glimmer of that feeling has shone so often in your eyes when---like the artists of every age---captivated by the hidden power of sounds and words, colors and shapes, you have admired the work of your inspiration, sensing in it some echo of the mystery of creation with which God, the sole creator of all things, has wished in some ways to associate you."

Craftsmanship is also an ascetic pursuit in many ways because it requires concentration and self-sacrifice.  Anyone who has ever gotten really engrossed in an artistic project has experienced that miniature and exhilarating "death to self" where time passes by unnoticed.

Besides monasteries, are so many examples of cool artistic communities dedicated to prayer both now and in history. I'll just reference three for now:

• the Guild of St. Joseph and St. Dominic was home to several artists including war-poet and carpenter David Jones - there is a really great film about his life and art that you can find via a google search
• St. John Cantius, my beloved parish in Chicago, Illinois, that saved itself from shuttering through sacred music and Gregorian chant (I'll hopefully post an article that tells this whole story later)
• Another name that is very beloved to me though I have yet to visit: Little Gidding

For me, I consider juice making to be a craft that I take very seriously ;)  When I make big batches of green juice for juice cleanses, I think of the monks who lived off of nothing but beer (home-brewed, of course) for the entirety of Lent.  

My other primary craft is reading, researching, and writing about literature and poetry.  "Beauty will save the world" is a quote from a cherished storybook.  I believe there is much beauty to be found in giving a writer the profound honor of reading and engaging with their work.  It is its own form of craftsmanship.

(I'm a huge "mom blog" junkie and also a huge T. S. Eliot junkie, so I was really thrilled to find a Catholic mom blogger with a blog dedicated to "blogging the Wasteland"----WHAT!!  It really doesn't get any cooler than that, in my book.  That is a very cool "craft" to undertake---slowly chipping away at what Eliot is saying, and how the beauty in his poetic vision might illuminate our own lives as we do mundane tasks like walk to work, or in the blogger's case feed children and fold laundry.  Lots and lots of snaps to this mom blogger/craftswoman.)

So to round up some of these cool crafts, and add up a few more that are options (many of these are traditional monastic "crafts" and some are not):

• Juice making
• Reading literature and responding to it ("blogging the Wasteland")
• Beer brewing
• Cheese making
• Jam making (extra points for using berries you grew yourself---you know the that's what the monks would do!)
• Tapestry making
• Painting
• Wood working
• Chanting
• Singing
• Knitting 
• Gardening

And I'll note one last particularly significant craftsmen hobby of medieval monastics: writing/copying/illustrating the freaking Book of Kells and other ancient manuscripts....and thereby saving civilization!

Crafting---I mean beauty---really can save the world.

*JPII had several artistic talents of his own.  For example, he was a playwright as well as an actor---AN ACTOR FOR CRYING OUT LOUD (*snaps for you if you caught the Arrested Development reference - there are more from where those came from*)