I love the concept of useless devotion! It's nice to see other writers feeling the same uncertainty about what they're really doing (and continuing to write regardless)
We marvel over cathedrals as monuments of effort, but from the individual perspective, is the cathedral the point, or just the motivating force?
You write that "[t]he quality of effort itself has to bear its own meaning", and I couldn't agree more strongly. The cathedral will fall. Many of my favorite restaurants, powered by their chef-proprietors' relentless creativity and exhaustive hours, have come and gone. When I lived in New York, the cycles of creative destruction were obvious in the scaffolding that would endlessly appear, disappear, re-appear.
What if cathedrals have always been the wrong barometer for effort? In the Hebrew Scriptures, God is worshipped at a mobile altar in a tent until King David comes along and says, "hey, I've got this dope palace, God should have a dope house too." (Not an exact translation.) And so David begins construction of the first temple, which will be destroyed, and reconstructed, and destroyed. What we build in this world, whether for ourselves or for the divine, must inevitably collapse.
Contrast to the gardener, who works every year to bring life into the world, knowing the fixed length of their creation. Seeds sown in spring yield plants that die at frost. Perhaps roots are over-wintered, but regardless, every year is its own cycle. The soil keeps the score, telling the story of generations of care, or lack thereof.
The desire to bring beauty to the world is a good one. But we kid ourselves to think this beauty could ever be permanent. The beauty is simply an outward expression of the real virtue, that of the effort taken in the cathedral's construction. The quality of effort itself bears its own meaning.
The opening paragraph is especially wonderful. The phrase “ just as it’s no good to measure time in San Francisco by the weather” brought me back there as very few things do, somehow.
Thank you for this, and for the shoutout!
well done for getting some of our best corners in mind today with the concept of look to the other achievements and efforts in thankful way ,,
it took me towards the Notre Dame Cathedral just before the start of putting up the sign on the building site with love 🌹..
I love the concept of useless devotion! It's nice to see other writers feeling the same uncertainty about what they're really doing (and continuing to write regardless)
We marvel over cathedrals as monuments of effort, but from the individual perspective, is the cathedral the point, or just the motivating force?
You write that "[t]he quality of effort itself has to bear its own meaning", and I couldn't agree more strongly. The cathedral will fall. Many of my favorite restaurants, powered by their chef-proprietors' relentless creativity and exhaustive hours, have come and gone. When I lived in New York, the cycles of creative destruction were obvious in the scaffolding that would endlessly appear, disappear, re-appear.
What if cathedrals have always been the wrong barometer for effort? In the Hebrew Scriptures, God is worshipped at a mobile altar in a tent until King David comes along and says, "hey, I've got this dope palace, God should have a dope house too." (Not an exact translation.) And so David begins construction of the first temple, which will be destroyed, and reconstructed, and destroyed. What we build in this world, whether for ourselves or for the divine, must inevitably collapse.
Contrast to the gardener, who works every year to bring life into the world, knowing the fixed length of their creation. Seeds sown in spring yield plants that die at frost. Perhaps roots are over-wintered, but regardless, every year is its own cycle. The soil keeps the score, telling the story of generations of care, or lack thereof.
The desire to bring beauty to the world is a good one. But we kid ourselves to think this beauty could ever be permanent. The beauty is simply an outward expression of the real virtue, that of the effort taken in the cathedral's construction. The quality of effort itself bears its own meaning.
The opening paragraph is especially wonderful. The phrase “ just as it’s no good to measure time in San Francisco by the weather” brought me back there as very few things do, somehow.